


Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

by PortiaAdams



Series: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow [1]
Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: 1920s, Alternate Canon, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, Eventual Smut, F/M, Gangsters, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Italian Mafia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prohibition, Romance, Slow Burn, Veterans, World War I, greek tragedy but with fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 164,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24252208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PortiaAdams/pseuds/PortiaAdams
Summary: Every Greek tragedy needs an Antigone or a Danaë. Every King Lear needs a Cordelia.Clara Thompson, like everyone around her, is learning to cope in a post-World War I reality. The reality includes Prohibition, which her father (a dirty politician) sees as a chance to consolidate wealth and power. Her pseudo-brother Jimmy is physically back in Atlantic City, but his soul still seems elsewhere. After her father banishes Jimmy to Chicago, Clara chases after him and meets Richard Harrow, a young vet whose war damage isn't confined to his face. Meanwhile, her father's machinations put everyone's lives in danger and contribute to changing familial ties.
Relationships: Richard Harrow/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2145606
Comments: 403
Kudos: 78





	1. Amicitia-June 1920

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard Harrow makes a new friend; Jimmy gets yelled at. Takes place during "Hold Me in Paradise."

Chicago-June 1920

“Excited?” Her father asked as the car zoomed them towards the hotel from the train station. Outside the window she could see the light glinting off the waters of the lake.

“I am, rather. I’m hoping to get some ideas for stories.”

“We have a deal, so don’t get too many ideas. You bring me the gossip from the women’s quarters and act as hostess, and you can push back the wedding, although I don’t see why you want to. Darcy has said he’ll allow you to write since it apparently means so much to you.”

Clara smiled pleasantly while seething internally. They had a deal, did they? As far as she was concerned her father had already broached the terms of the deal.

She accepted her fate was to marry, and really, it would be nice to have a house. She’d like a dog and an actual home. She was the only one who considered it a shame that the thought of waking up every morning to Darcy Blaine made her feel vaguely ill.

Darcy was the most boring human being she’d ever met, and she’d been her father’s de facto hostess for political gatherings since she was barely more than a child. She’d spent many a day attempting to entertain octogenarian priests and ward bosses who were more impressed with themselves than she was with them. She knew the death by a thousand cuts feeling truly boring and conceited people inspired within her. It wasn’t, though, as if there were better options. As her father liked to remind her, having a certain life required marrying a certain type of man. Since that was the kind of life her father wished for her, she saw no escape from a marriage to a man duller than dishwater. The dog would have to be Rin Tin Tin to make up for the lack of personality in the house. Especially since she felt her own personality dulling with every minute she spent with Darcy. She wondered when all that would be left of her was some rough pencil outline of the person Clara Thompson used to be? A year, two, five?

And she hadn’t been aware that writing was something she needed permission to continue with.

The train station was close to the hotel (rebelliously, she thought that they could have easily walked instead of riding in a Cadillac limousine). Clara was relieved to get to the hotel. She had her own plans and schemes for the visit that no one else knew, and she was anxious to begin. Her heart beat quicker in her chest as she thought of all she wanted to accomplish that day. However, as she looked around at the richly decorated lobby she realized Eddie and then her father were arguing with the front desk. Clara sat down, quietly accepting this would take awhile. Eddie, her father's valet/butler/assistant, smiled at her when he saw her pained expression. 

It was agonizing listening to her father badger the hotel staff into giving them the nicest hotel suite instead of the second nicest suite. Finally, when Nucky Thompson was happy and several other people less happy than they were before, they traipsed up to their suite. Clara felt her body almost humming with anticipation. Finally she was in her room and two-toned blue suitcases were delivered. She made quick work of unpacking, and then changed out of the richly expensive summer day dress she was wearing into a far simpler blue suit and white cloche hat. A quick look in the mirror revealed that the society version of Clara Thompson was gone, and replaced by the Career Girl version she kept carefully under wraps.

She had things to do. Sneaking out of the hotel was mildly nerve wracking, but soon she was on the street and navigating uptown. As she rode the elevated train to midtown Chicago, she carefully went over the samples in her portfolio and thought about exactly what she wanted to say. It was the best chance she'd had to date, and she wanted badly to for it to go well. 

It went well. It went very well, so her mood was high as she left the Loop and prepared to travel back to the South Side toward the hotel-even though this time she was going to make a detour.

Clara knew the real trick would be carrying out her plan when she arrived at 2222 Wabash Avenue. Visiting Wabash Avenue was the entire reason she'd offered to accompany her father to the convention, although she knew she was consigning herself to long afternoons and nights trapped in rooms with dreadfully boring people spouting platitudes she didn't believe. Somehow her father thought he could banish Jimmy from Atlantic City and she'd just accept she-and more importantly, Angela and Tommy-would never see him again. The long days of the war, the horrible days spent at Walter Reed, they all came back to her as the city sped by. Her father thought the War had been a joke, a childish rebellion. She could still feel the broken bits the War left inside of her; she couldn't imagine how jagged Jimmy's interior life felt. And then, Jimmy was home, she was home, and she thought they could settle into some young adult version of their previous lives. Instead, Prohibition and Darcy showed up on the eighth floor of the Atlantic City Ritz-Carlton at roughly the same time and, in moments when she was being honest with herself, Clara knew she found them equally poisonous. 

Luckily, the older Italian man guarding the back door bought her story that she’s Jimmy’s wife at face value, and handed over a key and directions to Jimmy's room (the $10 bill she slid him doesn’t hurt, either).

Intellectually, from piecing together the information she had picked up, she knew that the Four Deuces homed a variety of money-making vices for the Torrio family. It wasn’t, however, until a woman her age walked past Clara with her left breast hanging out of a negligee that Clara started seriously pondering if illicit sex was one of the money-making operations homed here. When she finally landed on the richly yet tackily decorated hallway containing Jimmy’s room, two different men leered at her and she rushed to open the door.

A man sitting at the desk stared down at a book. He was around her age, with thick dark hair. His sleeves were rolled up, and if she was going to put him in a story she would say he had strong arms and lovely hands. Her breath caught in her throat as the realization that this was not Jimmy hit her. Was she in the wrong room, was this man a threat? Everything felt like a threat and Clara had the terrible feeling she'd made bad decisions. At that moment, he turned as he slammed the book closed.

The first thing Clara saw was he was missing an eye, and then she realized the full extent of the damage. She could see some of his back teeth where part of his check was missing. His face looked raw and painful like it had never quite healed from whatever happened. The look on his face was also painful. He looked completely horrified and was scrambling to put some sort of mask on. She knew she's staring, but she couldn't make her eyes move away. Her mind was trying to make sense of the duality of his face.

“You’re not Jimmy,” she finally managed to say. He didn’t seem able to speak, and she considered walking back out into the hallway. However, this man was far less frightening than the two who looked at her like they were thinking about how she would look with her dress off. Her hands badly wanted to pull loose a lock of her hair and start twisting. She settled for smoothing her skirt repeatedly.

“I’m so, so sorry. I’m Jimmy’s...oh god, I don’t know what I am, foster-sister I suppose, and I got a key downstairs. I didn’t mean to barge into your room and frighten you.”

“This is. Jimmy’s. Room. He’s. Hrm. Out. He’ll be. Back.” His voice was a gravelly growl that didn’t fit his original handsome face. He made a clicking sound twice, and his mouth pulled down sharply on the right side of his face. The man refused to look up from the desk, and the healthy cheek was flushed. Her heart ached for him and she was shamed she had embarrassed him while he was simply sitting alone. Clara took a deep breath.

She stuck her hand out in front of her as she approached him. “I’m Clara Thompson. I’m guessing you are a friend of Jimmy’s?”

“Yes. I’m. Richard Harrow.” He shook her hand back, but didn't make eye contact with her. The careful, pained pronunciation of his name made her feel even worse, but at the same time something told her this man was safe. All of her other instincts told her that other than Jimmy, he might be the only person in this house she might be safe with. She didn’t move her hand.

“Mr. Harrow, may I ask a huge favor?” She looked around, flushed. “So I spend a lot of time pretending to be plucky and independent and not scared of anything.” She took a deep breath. “But I’ve never been in a, well, whorehouse before and the men in the hallway scared me.”

“This is. My first. As well.” Her hand was soft and warm, and she laughed at his answer, he thought. He tried to look up at her, but then looked away, blushing, realizing what he had just said. “Did they. Mm. Are you all right?”

She nodded. “Just not as brave or adventurous as I thought I was. Do you mind if I wait with you for Jimmy? I really need to talk to him, but I don’t want to have to leave and come back.”

“Yes. Don’t go. Downstairs.” Richard stood up to offer her the desk chair.

“It’s okay, I’ll sit on the bed.” Clara took in the dusky purple walls, the pictures of film stars cut out and taped over the bed, and wondered how this was Jimmy's room. She wondered if she'd ever ask him. She wondered if Jimmy would tell her.

Richard was incredibly uncomfortable. It had been a long time since he was alone in a room with a girl, well, a girl like this at least. She looked so wholesome, like a drawing in a magazine advertisement, except she was sitting on a bed in a whorehouse and talking to him like a normal person. She had a diamond ring on her left hand, which he noticed because he couldn't bring himself to look her in the face. Someone wealthy with a whole face put it there, he was sure.

“You brought. Jimmy. A magazine?” Richard gestured towards the package in her hands.

“Sort of,” Clara answered. She had broken every major rule of propriety she knew-she had busted into a strange man’s room, was passing time in a house of ill repute, and had plopped down on a bed with a man in the room whom she had known for maybe four minutes. Might as well go all in.

“Mr. Harrow, now that I’ve interrupted you when clearly you weren’t expecting company and I’m imposing on you when you’d probably prefer to be left alone, I’m going to declare we are friends because I have good news and I need a friend. It’s one reason I came looking for Jimmy.” She kicked her shoes off and tucked her feet under her, smiling at him like she already knew the answer to a question she hadn’t yet posed. “Is that okay?”

It had been so long since he had a friend, but Jimmy seemed to bring more and more friends to his life. He kept waiting for her act repulsed, or stop looking directly at him. He almost wished she would. She would have liked him before, he thought, when he was whole.

“All right. Friends.”

She looked up under her eyelashes, trying to put the man in the mask together with the unmasked man at the desk. The scar coming out from under the mask was thick and whispered at the awfulness of whatever horror transpired. She could see the scar on his throat through his collarless shirt. He obviously found it painful to talk. Veteran, no doubt, she thought. She doubted he was more than a couple of years older than she and Jimmy.

“I’m a writer. Well, I’m trying. Until now, I’ve only had pieces published in little magazines and papers I'm not sure anyone actually reads. This morning, tough, I met with a Chicago publisher and got a great assignment. And when I was at the newsstand, I was able to buy a real magazine with one of my pieces in it! It's my first important piece.”

She handed him the magazine. The cover had a drawing of a little girl in a pink dress played at the edge of the ocean.

“Are your stories. Fiction?”

“No, I’m not inventive enough for fiction.”

“Real. Is. Better.”

“Rich, let’s...” Jimmy said as he opened the door, but he stopped when he saw Clara sitting on the bed, looking at a magazine with Harrow, who was sitting in the desk chair. What the actual fuck?

“How nice to see you! Enjoying Chicago? Are you eating well?” Clara asked in a cold voice when she looked up.

Richard looked between Jimmy and Clara, confused as to how fast her demeanor changed.

“Clara, what the hell?” Jimmy went to hug her.

“Not so fast, mister. What the hell is wrong with you? You disappear AGAIN?” Clara thought that just because she'd somewhat pieced together why Jimmy left Atlantic City and the role her own father played didn't mean she needed to share that information immediately. 

Richard tried to draw back closer to the desk, his hands wringing against each other. He desperately wished he was somewhere else, and cast a nervous glance at the book on the desk. Either Clara or Jimmy could notice it at any moment.

Clara jumped off the bed in stocking feet and Jimmy advanced on her.

“Hey, can we start with what the hell are you doing here?” Jimmy asked.

“I tracked you down, because your wife and child haven’t heard from you and are broke. Dad is not feeling particularly generous, and I don’t make enough money to keep them going. When I went to check on them before I left, Angela didn’t even have any eggs for Tommy’s breakfast. But, you know, nice suit.”

Jimmy closed his eyes. “I write every week. I send them money, I swear.”

“Well, then you need to take it up with Postal Delivery! Or, and here’s an idea, call them! Perhaps you’ve heard of the telephone?”

They stared at each other. Clara gave up first and lightly punched his arm. “Ugh, I miss you, you idiot. Angela misses you. Tommy misses you. Gillian is full of helpful advice, which isn’t exactly making Angela’s life any easier, but I know she’s missing you, too. We just got you back, and you are gone again.”

“It’s so great here, Clara. I’m doing really well. Nobody...”

“You’ve escaped being Prince of the Boardwalk? Must be nice to have agency,” she said in a voice that sounded both happy for him and full of barbed wire.

Jimmy turned to look back at Richard, who was staring at the floor like he’s considering trying to climb underneath it. “Jesus. Richard, was she like this with you?”

Clara turned to look at him. His mouth twitched hard. “No, she was. Hrm. Mmm. Friendly.”

“Thank you. Mr. Harrow is a very kind man who took me in to wait for you.”

“It’s a new experience for Clara to be described as friendly, she’s not used to it. Look, I’ve got to get back downstairs because I just heard Nucky is on his way here. I’m guessing he doesn’t know about your little field trip?”

Clara looked aghast. “Um, no.”

Jimmy laughed before hugged her goodbye and handed her the contents of his wallet. “Give that to Ang. I’ll figure a way to get you out of that mausoleum Nuck has you staying in and the three of us will go do something fun tomorrow night. Rich, get her out of here.” With that, he was gone.

“I will. Walk You. To your hotel.” Richard volunteered, from where he was still half trying to hide behind the desk.

Clara let her sigh out. “I wish I didn’t need to ask you to do that, but if you’d just get me away from here I would be forever in your debt. I didn’t want to tell Jimmy that I was frightened, because...”

“Because. You’re plucky. And adventuresome.”

She laughed. “Yes. I don’t want my secret out! Also, I’m kind of fascinated and left to my own devices I’d probably end up trying to interview the people who work here. I feel like that would be a poor decision on many levels.”

He tried not to think about her being fascinated, what it would be like if she and Odette met each other, or the various catastrophes that could result from Nucky Thompson’s daughter questioning the visitors to Torrio's house.

Once out of the house via the back alley they continued walking toward’s the Chicago Coliseum. “You are. Engaged?” he finally asked.

Clara looked down at the ring she secretly hated. It was beautiful, tasteful, and a reminder she was being forced into a life she didn’t actually want. “I try not to think about it.”

He blinked, uncertain of how to respond.

She shrugged and looked down. “His family could be helped by my father and vice versa. It’s a good match. Both families are very excited.”

“You don’t. Love. Him?”

Her face clouded over. “Do you know you are the first person to ask me that?” She gave him a half-smile. “It’s not particularly important, I suppose. I don’t, though. I don’t even think I like him.”

He walked silently next to her. Far too soon they were at the Chicago Coliseum, where she thanked him and told him she was looking forward to tomorrow night.

Back in Jimmy’s room, he picked up the magazine Clara left lying on the bed. He flipped through until he found her name, and looked at the article. The best books for young women. He looked at the pictures throughout the magazine and saw what he expected to find there. Shiny haired girls in pretty dresses with warm smiles are supposed to marry handsome men who love them.


	2. Welcome to the Boardwalk-July 1920

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy returns to Atlantic City with Richard in tow. Takes place during and directly after "Belle Femme."

Perhaps she didn't need to throw the silk dress she wore to her lunch engagement down with such furor, or kick the heels into the corner with such energy. Still, it was the only thing she could think of to relieve...well, Clara didn't actually have a word for the feeling she was trying to exorcise, and Clara was a person with a lot of words. Wrapping a kimono over her slip, she sat on her bed and decided between taking a bath now and writing into the night, or writing now and seeing where the evening led. Maybe she'd call Angela and offer dinner, and spend time with people capable of making conversation, like about to be three-year-old Tommy. It would be a nice change from the mummified tablemates who made up her luncheon.

She heard footsteps in the hallway. The left leg landed heavier with each step. She smiled and flung her door open.

"Jimmy! It's so good to see you!" He spun her around like they were still twelve, but the grimace on his face from the exertion the action required from his leg reminded her they were no longer children.

"Oh, no assault or insults this time?" He said with a half-grin as he set her back down.

She studied him for a moment. The suit was new and different for sure, but that wasn't it. Jimmy had changed in some real way, and it was almost a dramatic a change as the one she saw the day he came to Bryn Mawr to tell her he had enlisted or the day he came home from Europe.

"You look different. Tell me about Chicago?"

"What's to say? I did well."

A slight shiver went down her spine as she thought about what could be hiding in that succinct answer. The visit to the Four Deuces served as a window into a world she felt was encroaching on her own. She looked at the door that led to her father's part of the suite. He was dirty, she knew, but she firmly believed every politician was. She'd met a lot and never met one she didn't think was corrupt or on the take. Her father was just better at it than most. But now, Jimmy, and her father... it was different. It was a new decade and a new game, and she wasn't sure any of them were well suited to the play.

"I'm starving, though. The dining car was out of order." Jimmy continued.

"Why didn't you tell us you were coming home? I would have ordered food!"

He looked at her strangely. "Clara, I swear, I sent a telegram." Jimmy lit a cigarette, took a drag, and passed it to her.

She frowned but took the cigarette. "That's odd. You know that Angela got the money you'd been sending, right? Before I even made it back from Chicago, she received an envelope."

"No, I didn't know," he answered.

Clara looked up at him as she drew another puff. That meant he hadn't been home yet.

"I'm sorry you missed out on seeing Chicago with Richard and me," Jimmy said.

"And I as well. Instead, I got to share my compartment on the train with the world's most empty-headed woman. That's a story I'll tell you later." She looked at the cigarette with great interest for a moment. "How is Mr. Harrow?"

"Sitting on the Boardwalk, waiting for me to finish meeting with Nucky." He regarded her thoughtfully. "Did he have the mask off when you walked into my room?"

Clara nodded. "It looks so raw and painful. Is it hard for him speak? He's so deliberate with his words."

"I think so; he doesn't really say. I don't think many people see him without the mask, though. But I also think most people don't look at him at all, but you did." Now he regarded his childhood friend seriously. It was true what he said that evening in his room. Clara was many things to most-charming, tactful, clever. Rarely was she openly friendly. He wondered why they both had such similar reactions to Richard Harrow. For him, it was because Richard's war wounds looked how his felt on the inside.

Suddenly, he pictured Clara as she was when they were eight, and he wondered if maybe she felt the same after all.

"James, Mr. Thompson is ready," Eddie called from the hall.

"I'll talk with you soon," he said.

Clara's thoughts returned to Richard. She had seen that the left side of his mouth was missing, and the throat scar. She'd bet the mask had to come off to eat, that he wouldn't want to do it in public, and anyway, Jimmy said that the dining car had been out of service. Meaning he was hungry, and she was a girl with a room service department at her disposable.

"Eddie, could you do me a favor?" she asked, sticking her head into the other hall. "Please ask the kitchen to rush a picnic-easy to eat things, nothing on the bone. Soft bread. And I'll need utensils and some bottles of cola." She thought through it all again. "Oh, and straws. I need straws. I'll pick it up at the front desk."

Her hands bypassed her fancier summer outfits and landed on a favorite, a simple floral dress she'd had since college. Perfect. She was lacing her espadrilles when Eddie lets her know her picnic was waiting at the front desk.

Carting the box and two glass bottles out of the hotel, she scanned the nearby benches. She saw him immediately and walked up behind the bench.

"Fancy meeting you here," she said from behind him.

Richard stared out into the sea. His mask was hot on his face, he was hungry, and being in a new place with so many people made his skin crawl. He saw a pretty young woman holding a picnic box in the corner of his sight, but he didn't connect her with him until she walked in front of him.

"Mmm. Miss Thompson."

"Clara, please. I'm so glad you came from Chicago with Jimmy!" She smiled and actually looked happy to find him sitting on her Boardwalk. He looked down at his hands, twisting around each other of their own accord, and saw her leg brush against his case with the sniper mask as she sat down. He winced at the incongruity of her floral skirt and bare leg against the souvenir of war.

"Jimmy said the dining car was out of order, so I brought you a picnic," she continued like he was participating in the conversation. He looked at her again, startled. It was kind, but he couldn't eat in front of all these people. He couldn't eat in front of her, with her immaculate floral dress and shiny hair.

"It's all packed up so you can take it with you," she went on, pretending she hadn't seen the look of panic. "But I'm thirsty, and I haven't even been on a train from Chicago. So I thought you might be as well?" She handed him a glass bottle before opening the top of the picnic box and pulling out straws. She frowned as she looked deeper into the basket.

"They forgot to put in a bottle opener. I'll go get one from the front desk."

"No. Mmm. Here," Richard pulled a knife from his waistband and swiftly removed the tops. Clara stared straight into the ocean as he turned to drink his. "Mmm. Thank you."

She turned to smile. "I was just thinking this will be the most enjoyable thing I get to do all day."

"What do you. Erm. Do?"

"I do nothing, and yet it requires me to change clothes three times a day and spend all my time with people I don't actually like."

Later that evening, Jimmy checked out Richard's new room with him. Close to the Boardwalk, close to his flat with Ange. Perfect. "Not bad, Rich. Atlantic City is going to be good for us," Jimmy spotted the hamper, which could only hold a picnic from the hotel. "What's that?"

"Clara, she. Mmm. Brought me lunch."

Jimmy laughed. "Oh, Jesus, I can't wait to see what she thought to pack for you."

Richard pulled out a pigeon pie, soft bread, Saratoga chips, grapes, cheese, gingerbread, and a jar of pate. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with some of those things. Jimmy laughed again.

"Clara and I shared a crib, and she's like a sister. If she likes you, she'll do anything for you. I'd do anything for her. But people call her the princess in the tower, and that's what she is. She's spent her life on the eighth floor of the Ritz, with Nucky passing money out like fairy dust, and a whole hotel staff ready to do her bidding. It makes her a little, uh, impractical about some things. If she ever tells you, she'll bring lunch be prepared for caviar or for fried chicken and the fact she doesn't really see the difference between them."

Richard thought about Jimmy's words as he ate pate sandwiches. But later that night, once he was unpacked, he pulled out his book, scissors, and glue. He went past some of his layouts and found one he started in Chicago. Already pasted on the page was "Clara Thompson" cut out from her article, and the names of the books she recommended. Underneath, he glued the hotel logo from the paper napkin he found in the box and wrote "Clara's Picnic" underneath.

* * *

Richard had worked for Mr. Thompson for a couple of weeks, but so far, it solely consisted of following Jimmy around, waiting for him, and meeting more people than he could keep straight.

Jimmy had been closeted with Mr. Thompson for hours that night. Sometimes that wasn't so bad because Clara drifted out of her room and talked to him, and even if he couldn't always answer her, he liked the way she spoke to him like she had been sitting in her fancy hotel suite just hoping he would come by. She would tell him about playing with Jimmy's son, or the book she was reading, or the article she was writing. Sometimes she even had a new record and would put it on the gramophone in the next room and turn it up so he could hear it, but no one would think he was listening to music when he should be working. She did that mostly on the nights he didn't answer her.

He heard the front door to the suite open and a man's voice. It was followed by the click of high heeled shoes. The sound never stopped but kept coming closer. Richard had chosen a chair in the shadows so that no one would be able to see him (but also because if Clara had been home she would have been able to sit in the drawing-room and talk to him without people in the hallway seeing her). He saw a handsome, tall blonde man about his age in a dinner jacket walking in front of Clara. Clara was wearing a green dress even he could see must be very expensive, and she didn't look like Jimmy's friend. She looked like someone who was going to marry the man in the dinner jacket and never even realize people like Richard existed in her world.

He stared at Clara's face. Since the day she invaded Jimmy's room and declared them friends, he had seen her anxious, happy, angry, calm, teasing, excited, and laughing. Never had he seen her like this. Sometimes he couldn't keep up when Clara talks, so he just watched her face (sometimes he couldn't look at her face, or he could only look when she didn't look back). It changed with every thought. That night, there was no expression on her face. It seemed, he thought, like she was wearing a mask of her face. It was as blank as his own mask. As the man continued to talk, Clara sometimes nodded but never actually responded. She just stared blankly ahead.

"And who have we here?" The blond man finally said as they approached the hallway where Richard sat. He stood, twisting his cap in his hands. Clara saw him and smiled slightly.

"Mr. Richard Harrow, he works with my father. Richard, this is Darcy Blaine."

The man stared at Clara and twisted her hand into his. "I'm Clara's fiance."

"Your father, mm, is in his office. With Jimmy." Richard told Clara, not looking up at Blaine.

Clara could see Richard's vocal click and the cheek pull was worse. She wondered if it was from being tired or from stress.

"Well, then Clara, are you off to bed?" Blaine asked.

Clara stared at him. "Excuse me?"

He looked pointedly at Richard, and then back at Clara, taking her arm in his hand. "I need to get going, so don't you think you should go to bed?"

Clara's cheeks flamed. "I think I'm capable of deciding for myself, Darcy," she said, pulling her arm back.

"Let's not do this here," he said and started propelling her towards the door to the hallway that led to Clara's bedroom.

Richard stood up, ready to intervene, but Clara shook her head at him. Her fiance shut the door behind them. Richard heard their voices through the door, and was reasonably sure Clara was crying.

He realized that soon that man would be able to walk into any room with Clara he wished and shut the door behind them. Richard's long since accepted that no woman is ever going to want to walk into a room with him and shut the door, but it felt wrong that someone who could do that with Clara made her unhappy.

When Darcy finally left, and Clara came out of her room, Richard's eyes went to the red marks on her upper arm. He also noticed her eyes were rimmed with red.

He could use his M1917 Enfield, Richard decided. The man would never know what hit him. Or perhaps he deserved to know, and so the Colt 1903 would be the better choice. Clara sat next to Richard for a bit but didn't talk, and he decided the Colt is the right answer.

* * *

The next night he was asleep in his bed when a car honked outside his window. Jimmy. He dressed as quickly as possible, put on his mask, grabbed his kit, and went outside.

"A fucking d'Alessio tried to kill Nucky on the Boardwalk. Freaking Eddie saved him, but an innocent woman took the bullet. This means war, and this means Clara, Nuck's new lady, and her kids all need protection. When we get to the hotel, you're on Clara."

Richard drew his gun outside her room and entered quickly. Clara lay on her side, a book still in her hand and her bedside lamp on. He checked the bedroom, bathroom, and balcony but no one else was there. He holstered his gun.

"Mmm." He was a little uncertain about how to wake her. "Mmm, wake up," he tried again, and she stirred so he tried once more, "It's me. Mmm. Richard Harrow."

Clara sat up, rubbing her eyes, which made the right strap of her pajama top fall off her shoulder, and he tried not to look as she pushed it back up.

She leaned down to grab her kimono, wrapping it around her as she stared up at Richard. "I know who you are, silly. What's wrong? I doubt you woke me up for a chat."

"You need. To see your father."

Jimmy was impressed by how cooly Clara dealt with Harrow waking her up, and then finding out her father had been shot at. She barely changed her facial expression.

"In the morning, pack your things. It will be easier if you are with Margaret and her children. Fewer bodyguards needed, and it will be safer for you away from the Boardwalk," Nucky instructed.

Clara started to argue. "I barely know Margaret; she doesn't want me moving in! What could happen to me here at the hotel?"

"No arguments, Clara. Tomorrow morning Mr. Harrow will drive you over, and there he can guard all of you."

"Fine," Clara said. "I'm going to get some more sleep." Nucky nodded at Harrow to follow her.

"You know," Nucky said to Jimmy, "it worries me when she agrees so easily to a plan that isn't hers."


	3. The Tin Man-August 1920

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard acts as bodyguard for the Thompson/Schroeder family with a few issues along the way.

The house was deliciously silent as the first rays of light worked their way through the gap in her curtains. Clara tossed off her sheets and stretched, happy in the knowledge she was the first one awake. Staying with Margaret and the children had been quite a lot better than she thought it would be (thank god her exile from the Boardwalk occurred post-Lucy; she would have murdered her father's previous love if they had been forced to cohabitate, she thought).

She had never been so close to normal family life since she was a little girl. However, since age eight, home had mostly been a floor of a hotel she'd had mainly to herself. Spending almost all her time in a three-bedroom house with two children, another woman, often her father, and usually Richard was taking some adjustment. Writing all night and then sleeping until she had an engagement was impossible because there were so many other people and their schedules going on around her. Meals had to be eaten when they were prepared, and not when she thought to call down for something. It was never quiet. Some child was always making noise, her father was loudly playing happy families, or Margaret was cleaning.

Clara had never realized how much she relished silence.

What was saving her from slowly losing her mind, she knew, was having Richard around. He was as out of place in this happy tableau of her father's as she was. She was growing dependent on being able to catch his eye or talk to him when she got overwhelmed by the familial chaos of the house. Sometimes she thought she spent most of her time sitting somewhere near wherever he was. Partly because she could sense how the children and Margaret saw him-and for that she was less fond of them than she would have been otherwise-and she knew her presence offered him some protection. But mostly just because she liked being with him. It felt like she'd known him for years, not like she had just met him in June. Clara sighed thinking about it all. Laying in bed, she considered taking a full inventory of her feelings (which were confused at best) but instead decided to slip downstairs before anyone else got up.

As she pulled her kimono over her new pajamas (so modern, Madame Jeunet told her when she picked them out), she heard little feet going down the stairs. At first, she didn't think anything about it, and slowly exited her room on her way to the stairs.

Her foot was on the top stair when the screaming started, giving her a birds-eye view of the catastrophe as it unfolded. Emily, Margaret's four-year-old, walked up to Richard, who was asleep on the sofa. For a moment, Clara was distracted by what a boy Richard looked like while sleeping It touched her heart to see him curled up in his funny undershirt, and that moment of distraction came with a cost.

Emily began to scream. Richard woke and instinctively reached towards the screaming child to help her.

The moment when he realized he was the thing Emily was screaming at was so horrifying that Clara thought of it for years.

"It's okay, Emily," Clara said as she all but lept off the bottom stair into the living room, but she purposefully stepped around the child. Her father and Margaret were behind her on the stairs, and Clara knew she only had one chance, one play, to try and spare Richard further pain.

"It's okay," Clara kept repeating in the most soothing voice she was capable of as she positioned herself between Richard, who was desperately trying to put his mask on, and her father, whom she didn't trust to be kind, and Margaret, who wouldn't look at Richard even when he had the mask on.

"What the hell happened?" Nucky thundered from the foyer.

"It's my fault," Clara said. "I was moving around in my room. I must have woken Emily up, and when she came downstairs, she forgot Richard was here."

Nucky rolled his eyes. "That's certainly one interpretation."

"It's not comfortable to sleep with the mask on," Richard said, but his voice was both softer and more gravelly than usual.

"Look, we're all on edge here," Nucky said as he and Margaret took the still screaming child back upstairs.

"I'm sorry," Richard said softly. Clara didn't move until she heard her father shut the bedroom door upstairs.

Clara sat on the coffee table. Richard's hands were moving back and forth on his knees, and she placed her hands on top of his. He didn't look up at her.

"She's just a child with new people in her house. She doesn't understand," Clara said, rubbing her thumbs back and forth across the top of his hands, noticing the feel of skin under her fingers, while she tried to think of something that would make this better. "It's going to be okay."

Richard finally made eye contact with her. Her mouth went dry. Suddenly, she was aware of the fact her pajama-clad legs were touching his, that he had on some sort of funny old fashioned undershirt, and that the right side of his face was still warm from sleeping. It felt like the very air between them changed, and she felt her heart speed up. She opened her mouth to say something but couldn't find the words. Clara's teeth bit into her lower lip as she tried to think clearly, and without thought, she leaned forward slightly. It had been so long since she felt anything like this, and that had been in an even more fraught situation, that Clara was uncertain and confused.

A door opened upstairs. "Clara, join us, please," Nucky called down the stairs.

She squeezed Richard's hands and started formulating a plan of attack as she walked up the stairs.

Downstairs, he stared straight ahead and heard Mr. Thompson say, "All right, now about your latest stray..." before the door shut again.

"He's not a stray. He's my friend. He's a war hero. Jimmy says Richard's the best shot he's ever seen," Clara said.

"You and Jimmy are no longer children. His friends are not your friends."

"I didn't say..."

"He scares the children," Margaret interjected.

"Because they sense how uncomfortable you are with his face. It's not his fault. It's not as if he did anything wrong. Imagine having to go through life with children screaming at the sight of you just because your country went to war. It's a nightmare." Clara decided to try appealing to her father's pride in being leader of Atlantic City. "The least we-as the family of the leader of Atlantic City-can do is set a good example of how to help injured veterans." 

"We all know you spent the war doing War Work, but it's too early for you to start waving the flag and singing an anthem," her father (who thought her leaving college to work for the war effort was as pointless and wasted as Jimmy's leaving Princeton to join the Army, and managed to make the phrase "war work" sound like a joke) said dryly.

"I'm being practical. Richard is polite and soft-spoken. Let's compare that to some bodyguards I had as a child. Richard's here because we could be in danger. If something happens, the children's survival could depend on their willingness to go to him. I promise you, Margaret, Richard is the best-case scenario for a bodyguard you want for your children. If you'll try and find sympathy in your heart for a young veteran who needs it, I'll work out how to make the children accept him."

Neither Margaret nor her father answered, so she took it as a win. "I think one of the problems is the sleeping arrangement, but if it's all right with everyone, I'll sort that out today and then sort out the children."

Clara left the room, and Margaret turned to stare at Nucky. "What does she mean, sort out the children?"

"Don't worry, Clara wouldn't browbeat children."

"Are you certain?"

* * *

Later that day, when Nucky was informed that Eddie wasn't available to assist him because Clara had asked him to shop for Margaret's house, he decided he wasn't certain. While meeting with James about other (actually essential) issues, he brought it up. "Can you explain to me why Clara has decided that your Mr. Harrow is her newest project?"

Jimmy used his cigarette as a reason to delay answering. Nucky really didn't know Clara, he thought. He remembered suddenly when Clara was nine and wanted a chemical set. She was taken with the idea of blowing things up. Instead, Nucky bought her a dollhouse. It was beautiful and expensive, but Clara said it was boring. All she could do was arrange the little people in the rooms. He realized that's what Nuck thought of Clara, and maybe even he, Jimmy. They were small figurines to be arranged into scenes of Nucky's liking. He only saw what he wanted to see, the future Mrs. Darcy Blaine. The pretty blonde doll in the fancy house with the handsome husband. "Did you know that Blaine grabbed Clara's arm so hard he left marks?"

"All couples fight, James. Are you saying you've never left fingerprints on Angela?"

* * *

Clara knew Eddie would come through for her. He picked up the bed, bought linens, and brought things from her room at the Ritz. He even helped her set the bed up in the little storage area Margaret had left empty, and that Richard was already using to store his bag and what Clara assumed was his guns. Margaret and the children were in the yard, and she made quick work of making the bed and setting up the lamp.

"What's this?" a voice mumbled from behind her.

"Your room! No more early morning munchkin visits, and you can stretch out. That sofa is tragically small."

"Why?"

"You needed a better place to sleep-"

Richard shook his head. "Mmm. Why are. You. Being nice. To me?"

How sad, Clara thought, he's honestly shocked someone is kind to him. Clara considered about all the possible answers to his question. Saying because, without you here, I don't think I could stay in this house seemed to push the boundaries of propriety, so she chose her words carefully.

"Because you are my only friend in this house. We don't fit into my dad's imaginary new family. So us outsiders, we're in it together." Clara reached out and pressed her hand against his for a moment, and felt his fingers twitch into hers. Richard never looked up, but Clara felt her breath hitch at the contact and she stayed still for longer than absolutely necessary. 

In the end, it wasn't Clara, but Margaret, who made the children love Richard. Clara had been on a date with Darcy, and the next day was working on a writing assignment at the dining room table while Emily and Teddy drew. She was not paying attention until Emily grabbed her arm.

"It's you and the Tin Woodsman!" Emily told her as Clara admired the brightly colored scribbles.

"Why am I with the Tin Woodsman?" Clara asked.

"You're always talking to him," Teddy told her as he picked up another colored pencil.

Margaret looked in from the kitchen. "Mr. Harrow explained to the children that he's directly from Oz."

Indeed, Clara thought, she was so happy she wasn't locked in this house with Lucy.


	4. Women and Innocents-October 1920

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Violence
> 
> As this fic slides into the end of Season One, there's a streetside shootout, Harrow making a fantastic shot, hurt/comfort, and lots of other goodness.

"I'm not sitting in the back seat."

Richard wanted to argue with her, but she was the other Clara that afternoon. Other Clara terrified him. Other Clara wore expensive clothes. She went to hotels for luncheons and stood in groups of women dressed just like her, and they laughed in a way that didn't seem quite real. She looked like someone from a moving picture. She stood differently. She talked differently.

"I'm your driver. You should. Sit in the back."

"You are driving me. You are not a driver. There's a difference. If I were driving, would you sit in the backseat?"

He knew there was a logical fallacy in her reasoning, but it seemed altogether safer to get her in the car and off the street. He helped her into the car and flinched slightly at the feel of her hand against his fingers. When she moved her hand, he missed it.

Clara stared silently out the window as they drove. It was unlike her.

"That was a complete waste of my afternoon. Real things are happening in the world, women getting the vote, a presidential election, European refugees. Still, I'm supposed to spend my afternoon listening to people complain about the servant problem? I could have spent the afternoon writing."

"Mmm, why. Do you. Do it?"

"Well, it was my bridal luncheon, so I rather had to show up. Of course, I didn't have one real friend there. Just a lot of people currying favor with my father."

Richard's hands tightened on the wheel as the vision of red finger marks on her arm swam in front of his eye. Most days he was able to push the thought of Clara marrying Darcy Blaine from his mind, especially since the man had been out of town on business and Clara rarely left the safety of the townhouse. 

If someone asked Clara to explain how Richard would maneuver them into the house, she wouldn't be able to. It was something akin to participating in a square dance, but there was no music, your partner had a gun, rarely touched you, and seemed to think assassins were hiding in the azalea bushes. Once he decided the azalea bushes weren't up to anything nefarious he opened the door and let her in. However, he pushed her back behind him as soon as they crossed the threshold. She knew why in a flash. The house was deathly silent and still. No one could be in it. Clara looked into the living room. No toys, no blankets, no sign anyone lived there at all, except for a letter propped on the mantle.

They stared at each other.

"I think this moment of domestic bliss has concluded. Do you want to tell my father, or should I?" Clara asked.

Within two hours, they were moved back into the Ritz-Carlton. Eddie assigned Richard the small box room next to Clara's room, and the men moved in the bed Clara bought for Margaret's house.

Clara laid in her bed that night, trying to read _This Side of Paradise_ , but her mind wandered to the fact Richard was on the other side of the wall. She still tried to focus before realizing reading was a lost cause at the moment. She got up, sat on the floor, and started tapping on the wall.

Richard was lying on his bed, enjoying the freedom of removing his mask when he heard tapping on the wall separating his makeshift room from Clara's. He bounded out of bed, thinking she was calling for help, but then he recognized the pattern. It sounded like Morse code. It took him a second to realize she was tapping out hello over and over again on the wall. He didn't know what to do at first. Then he had to think about how to tap out his answer.

'I am here' is what he finally decided on.

There was silence from her side for a moment, and then the tapping began again.

'I am glad.' Long after the tapping stopped and he imagined Clara was asleep in her bed, he looked at the square of plaster and wondered why.

* * *

"Hey, you," Jimmy said as he walked into the drawing-room.

"Hey, you." Clara answered. Jimmy handed her his cigarette after she responded, and she took a long drag. "How are Angela and Tommy? I haven't seen them since I've been under Ritz-arrest."

"Tommy's great."

Clara worried about the gap in the answer. She also worried about the fact Jimmy's eyes looked like blue glass, like a doll's eyes. There was nothing behind them.

"Could they come here for a visit?" she asked.

"Okay, sure," he answered distractedly.

Clara sighed because it was clear he'd lost interest in speaking with her. She wondered when Jimmy started treating her like a nuisance.

"Richard, you and I are on Nucky this afternoon. Ted O'Bryan is going to cover Clara," Jimmy announced when Richard joined them in the drawing-room.

Richard said nothing but he didn't like this change in procedure. Ted O'Bryan wasn't careful. The man didn't think (although, sometimes, Richard wondered if Jimmy thought before working a job even though he felt a stab of disloyalty when he considered it). Richard needed this job, though, so he didn't argue.

Good, Clara thought. It was better for Richard if her father realized what an asset he was. Still, she knew, she'd looked forward to a long walk with him, and she liked going to the library with him. He spent most of his time watching to make sure no one came close to her, but sometimes she could make the side of his mouth twitch when she read particularly ridiculous book titles out loud.

Richard, Jimmy, and Nucky left the hotel by the door to South Iowa Street, where Thompson's limo was parked. In the lobby, Richard watched Clara and O'Bryan go out of the main street door to Pacific Avenue. She had said earlier in the day that she needed to go to the library. It was a twenty-minute walk, but she inevitably would want to stop at Woolworth's or the bookstore as well. Richard's eye never stopped moving. Something bothered him. O'Bryan let Clara walk to his left, which meant she was on the street side. Not safe. Not what his mind was telling him he was missing, though. His heart started to race as he thought back through everything he'd seen since they'd exited the lobby.

Clara stepped onto Pacific Avenue thinking about what she needed from the library. She was also out of paper and a few other necessities, she remembered, so she needed to stop at Woolworth's. The one on Ocean Avenue near the library, she decided, because the one on the Boardwalk carried more tourist things, and wouldn't necessarily have all the things on her list.

A car drove into the curb facing the wrong way. Clara saw the face of a boy, just a kid, really, in the window. Then O'Bryan, who was walking slightly ahead of her, no longer had a head. She blinked as a fine red mist settled on her face.

Before she could scream, a thick hand clamped down on her mouth and nose. Another arm snaked around her waist and tried to lift her off the ground. She slammed her heel down on the top of his foot (a trick Jimmy taught her when they wrestled as kids), which caused him to loosen his grasp enough that she could bite his fingers.

"Richard?" Jimmy asked, confused as to why the man was staring down the street towards the intersection with Pacific Avenue.

"Cover Thompson," Richard growled as loudly as he could as he pulled out his Colt and started running towards Pacific. He knew that sound. He knew what he heard. 

Clara drew in every bit of breath she could. Richard had been in the lobby; she could only pray he was still around the corner and not already in the car. She screamed his name as loudly as she could, terror evident in her voice. The man was trying to drag her into the car. She kicked wildly, pushing off against the car with one leg. The kid she saw in the window grabbed her other leg.

Jimmy and Nucky, not already aware that something seemed amiss, started running at the sound of Clara screaming for Harrow. 

When Richard turned the corner, his mind put together a field map. O'Bryan's body. A large man holding Clara with a gun in his hand, but not at her head. Her leg held by someone standing behind the car door.

Clara saw him, but he forced himself to ignore the terrified look on her face. She was just another form. She had to be. He only let himself see when she stopped flailing.

Richard stopped running and crouched while he raised the gun. He wanted the bullet to go straight through the man's eye. He couldn't risk a cheek shot, because he was already shooting so close to Clara's head. Must be a kill shot, he thought, because it lessened the chance the man could pull the trigger on the gun held at Clara's side.

The sound of the shot rang through the sunny afternoon. It was a clean shot. Unfortunately, Clara freezing when she saw Richard's gun meant she was off-balance, so when the man fell and the person in the car didn't let go of her leg she hit the ground hard. The car took off, and she was being pulled across the sidewalk. Richard prepared to shoot again to stop the vehicle, but there was no clear to shot to take. As he neared, the person in the car let go of her ankle. Clara was trying to push herself up when he got to her, but something was wrong with her left arm and she couldn't push up.

He recognized the look in Clara's eyes and on her face. Trauma and terror he thought, recognizing she was going into shock. At first, she stared blankly at him when he got to her, but when he leaned down over her and whispered "Trust me," and looked her straight in the eye, she nodded and threw her uninjured arm around his neck. Richard lifted her and ran for the side door. He watched everyone but saw no apparent threat, planning on how he would utilize the elevator. Eight floors were too much to carry Clara, which took both arms. The first part of his mission accomplished, neutralizing the immediate threat, his next stage was to get her to safety. Jimmy would have to see to Nucky.

Nucky and Jimmy rounded the corner of the block just in time to see Richard lifting Clara. Jimmy took careful aim at the speeding car, but only succeeded in destroying the back window.

Watching Clara let Harrow help her reminded Nucky of his daughter's words from a few weeks ago ("If something happens, the children's survival could depend on their willingness to go to him," she said, standing in Margaret's bedroom wearing those ridiculous Oriental pajamas.) His ever-practical princess, she knew befriending the bodyguard could pay dividends, he thought. It just saved her life.

Meanwhile, two dead bodies laid on the sidewalk. Clara's purse lay abandoned in a pool of blood.

Jimmy stood over the dead gangster, while he considered the placement of the bullet and the circumstances of the shot.

"I could have never made that shot, Nuck. If Richard hasn't been here..." Jimmy let his voice trail off. "Look, he put the bullet in as straight of the scumbag's eye as possible to keep it away from Clara. And he couldn't shoot at the car, because Clara was within inches of going under the wheels as it was."

Nucky put his hand over his face, as the reality of the situation sank in. "My daughter, James. They went after my daughter."

* * *

"I need. To put you, hmm, down," Richard told her when they neared the elevator. Her hands were still clinging to his shirt. He gently pulled her away and propped her up against the wall, noticing she couldn't put weight on one leg. He pulled his Colt and swept the room while waiting for the staff elevator to open, terrifying the operator when it did.

"Take us. To her floor," he ordered, picking Clara back up.

The elevator operator put the required key in the eighth-floor slot and didn't speak a word. The princess of the Boardwalk covered in blood and clinging to her weird mask-wearing bodyguard was just another day at work at the Atlantic City Ritz-Carlton; he was just glad the gun wasn't pointed at him any longer.

Richard carried her into her bedroom when the elevator opened, grabbing the quilt at the foot of her bed to wrap around her as he set her on the bed. She was trembling badly. Suddenly, he had an image of Clara leaning in front of him, telling him it was going okay while rubbing his hands.

"It's going. Hmm. To be okay. I'll be right back." He dashed to the bar cart in the hallway, grabbing one of the sodas Eddie kept on the cart for a mixer. Out of habit, he grabbed a straw. When he came back to the bedroom to hand it to her, her hands were shaking too hard to hold the bottle.

When Nucky and Jimmy walked in, they saw Richard carefully holding the bottle so Clara could drink. Nucky was horrified at her condition. Her face was covered in blood. Her blood, or O'Bryan's, he could not tell.

"Are you all right?" Jimmy asked her.

Clara nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"She needs a doctor. She can't put. Weight. On her left leg. Mmm. Something is wrong with her shoulder. She hit her head. Mmm. Could be a concussion."

Most words he'd ever heard the masked man speak at one time, Nucky thought to himself. "Harrow, you saved my daughter today. I won't forget it. I'm sending for the doctor."

"Stay with her, please," Jimmy asked, but before he followed Nucky, he watched Harrow. Richard's actions in planning the shot, the way he retrieved Clara, the way he assessed her injuries... Clara wasn't going to be the only traumatized by today. Jimmy would bet money that mentally, Richard had returned to the battlefield.

"I can feel his blood on my face," Clara whispered when they were alone. Richard nodded, and went into her bathroom, bringing back towels and the white metal first aid kit from the shelf.

Richard gently wiped the cloth across her face. Usually, he couldn't bring himself to look at Clara directly in the face. Now, though, he had to, because he also couldn't bear for her face to be covered in gore. It was the same feeling he had when her skirt brushed the case with the dead German's sniper mask. He needed to believe there was something whole and untarnished left.

Suddenly, he had a flash of the boy he was before the war. The boy who preferred his drawing pencils to his pistol, who loved Tom Swift books, whose talent at sharpshooting was pure happenstance and only developed past raw talent because his sister, Emma, loved shooting so much. Sometimes, when Clara was treating him like a normal person, he almost felt that boy inside him. The idea he might not be dead inside is far more terrifying than the idea that he is. The idea that this would make Clara disappear into herself was equally terrible.

When the doctor came, Richard stepped outside. He considered that few kills have ever given him the satisfaction of destroying the man terrorizing Clara. The rest of the d'Allessio family must die before they do any more damage. Clara was an innocent, not a soldier. Having to shoot so near her, knowing that if he miscalculated Clara died, made it hard to breathe as he thought back over the kill. 

He heard her scream. At first, he thought he was just reliving the feeling of standing outside and hearing her cry for help moments after he heard the sound of a gun with a silencer. Then he realized she was screaming for him now.

She stood, wobbling, in the corner. Her ankle was wrapped, and some of the worst of the scrapes were covered in bandages. The doctor and nurse stood in front of her.

"Get back," Richard growled. They instinctively got out of his way.

Clara reached out with her right hand for his arm to steady herself. "They say my shoulder is dislocated. They tried to hold me down," her whispers were desperate.

He looked at her left arm hanging and knew they were right. He also remembered Clara being held down by the d'Allessio goon and knew why she was scared.

"I know they have to do it, but...can you do it?" She fought back the tears. "I just need it to be someone I know won't hurt me."

Richard nodded. A memory of a nurse with soft dark hair and a British accent who held his hand and told him stories about growing up in Yorkshire with her sisters every time they debrided his face floated in front of him.

"Fine," the doctor answered when Richard told him of Clara's plan, "but you can't let her move."

Richard steeled himself to touch Clara. This was different from carrying her. She stood facing him, balanced on one leg as he wrapped his left arm around her so that her right arm was trapped. She laid her head against his shoulder, and he felt her eyelashes moving against his neck. His other hand moved to hold her head still, which really meant he was cupping her head in his hand. He made sure that her face is against his good side. It feels like he was embracing the woman he's closest to.

The memory of the way her breath caught when she rubbed his hands, after his face scared little Emily Schroeder when Clara realized how close he was to her comes back to him. The way she went still, the revulsion on her face as she stood up stayed with him. No decent woman could stand to be near him for long. He still couldn't resist smoothing her hair back. She whispered, thank you. He tried to feel nothing, but the feel of her hair against his hand, her torso pressed against his, made him think of the dream of Odette on the beach. The doctor made quick work of putting her shoulder back in place; Clara screamed in real agony, but then it was over, and she slumped against him. He wasn't sure what to do, so he stood there with Clara laying against his shoulder

It's why he didn't realize what the doctor was doing until it was too late, until the needle had already pierced Clara's skin.

Morphine. Richard doubted he would have lived without it, but when he thought back to the dreams and terrors he had while medicated, he knew he would have picked death. The combination of terror and the drug was disastrous. The doctor finally left, and Richard knew he had to prepare her.

"They. Mmm. Gave you morphine. It's going to make you have. Strange dreams," he told as he helped her into bed.

Clara nodded her understanding, her eyelids already growing heavy. Dreams, she thought, knowing what she was going to see, knowing what she always saw.

Suddenly, her hand reached out to grab his as her eyes clouded over. She tried to speak, to tell him, but the medicine was working to quickly. Clara was well aware of the subject matter of her upcoming nightmares.

"Stay," she whispered. "Please," was she was able to say.

She was out within minutes. The fallout from the earlier adrenaline rush, the activity of the afternoon, the emotional upheaval caused by having her close, and then finally the pure comfort of her hand in his in the calm bedroom lulled him to sleep soon after.

When he woke up, he was first aware of the feeling of warm flesh against his hand. For so long, no one touched him. Then he heard soft cries.

"His face, Daddy, his face!" Clara cried from the bed. Richard snatched his hand back and stood up and left her room. From down the hall, he heard Jimmy on the phone. He waited until Jimmy ended the phone call.

"Hmm. Clara. Is. Having nightmares. Morphine. I'm making. Them. Worse." Each word was a struggle when he first woke up, but the effort was made worse by the confirmation that the girl who sunnily declared herself his friend minutes after seeing him without the mask found him the same nightmare fuel as everyone else did.

Jimmy stared. He thought about Clara throwing her arm around Richard. Clara, who held herself at a complete reserve with almost everyone, but was talking to Richard about her writing minutes after meeting him. Who tracked Richard down on the Boardwalk the day they arrived from Chicago because she was afraid he would be thirsty and hungry. Who, according to Nucky, made the Schroeder family and Nucky himself accept Richard by sheer force of will. He somehow doubted Richard was influencing her morphine-induced nightmares. He remembered the meat of his morphine dreams all too well.

"Come with me," Jimmy ordered as he headed down the hallway.

The covers were thrown back, and Clara was moving around on the bed. Fucking morphine, Jimmy thought. They should have given her laudanum. He sat next to her and carefully touched her face. "Clara, wake up. It's me."

"Jimmy," she said, sounding on the edge of tears. "Where's Richard?"

Jimmy looked up at the masked man, still standing in the hallway. "Richard thinks he's scaring you."

Clara shook her head, trying to sit up. "No. Oh. Oh, Jimmy. It's because I keep seeing his face when I close my eyes. And his hand. I can't stop seeing it." There was a faint edge of hysteria in her voice.

Jimmy closed his eyes. Of course. "Rich, she's not talking about you. Clara, are you talking about Richard?"

"He said he wouldn't leave, Jimmy."

"I'm. Here." Richard said from the hallway.

"I can't stop seeing it. The blanket moves, and his hand falls out," Clara continued.

Damn it, Jimmy thought. He climbed on the bed next to her, like he did when they were children.

"Remember when we were kids, and the Boardwalk didn't go all the way out. We would build a camp. We'd take peanuts..." Jimmy hoped like hell this worked to move Clara to all the times they created their own world on a quiet Atlantic City Beach, away from the horrors of their little lives.

Finally, Clara slept. Richard was still standing in the doorway. Jimmy walked back out into the hall, and motioned for Richard to follow.

"I can't tell you what she's dreaming about. It's Clara's story to tell, and I don't know that she's ever told anyone since it happened. Just know, it has nothing to do with you. It happened to her when she was just a little kid." Richard nodded. Jimmy lit a cigarette. "And I'm the last one who should be giving advice about how to come back from the war, but Richard, you've got to stop seeing yourself as a friendless man. If no one else, you have me. You have Clara. We know you aren't a monster."

Later that night, when Clara slept and Eddie promised that the apartment was locked down, those words echoed in Richard's mind, along with the sound of her voice screaming his name. The look of fear on her face while she tried to wrestle with the D'Alessio soldiers came back to him. He left the apartment and set out to find information.

The next morning, he had to track Jimmy down. Jimmy's father was apparently dying, and Jimmy was staying at the incredibly vast, vaguely terrifying mansion where his father lived. Jimmy told him he had at least two friends. He found it odd that a Wisconsin farmboy's friends were a girl who lived in the Ritz-Carlton and a guy whose father lives in Dracula's Castle.

"Chalky, Mr. White, heard back from his men in Philadelphia. Mrs. d'Allesio. The mother is there. The sisters and another brother, Adrian." Richard struggled to get the words out.

"Never heard of him," Jimmy replied.

"He's a dentist. I could go there."

"Where? To Philadelphia? There's no point."

"I would kill the mother and the sisters. And the dentist. That would make them stick their heads up," Richard explained, his nervousness making his words run together.

Jimmy took a deep breath. "Richard, we don't kill women and innocents."

"They tried. To kill Clara. She's innocent."

Jimmy clapped his hand on Richard's arm. "Yes, and they are no better than the scum who sliced Pearl. And we are going to deal with the d'Alessios, just like we dealt with those maggots. But if we go after women and children...we make it worse for Clara, and for Angela, and for Tommy, and any other person we love. We make their lives forfeit. We'll get these bastards, though. I promise."


	5. Unknowable Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara recovers from the kidnapping attempt and decides to chart her own life course. Richard and Jimmy arrange for a present. Nucky throws a party. Jimmy comes to a realization. Takes places between "Paris Green" and "A Return to Normalcy."

"James, good, you are here. Two things before we get to work. I'm giving Harrow a bonus for protecting Clara," Nucky informed Jimmy, who nodded in agreement. Richard deserved it, but Jimmy knew Richard would be hesitant to take it.

"Also, I want to give Clara a present. You apparently know how to buy jewelry now. Get her something." Nucky wrote on the back of a card he picked up off his desk. "Put that with the gift."

Jimmy found Richard coming back from the post office. "Nuck is going to give you money for saving Clara. Don't decide to be noble and refuse it. Clara won't think that money is why you saved her, but she will think you are an idiot if you don't take it. Nuck doesn't know how to...relate. He doesn't know how to thank you for saving his daughter. So that's what the money is for."

"Mmm."

"Also, he told me to buy a present for Clara. Any ideas?"

Richard nodded. "Yes, she wants. A typewriter."

Jimmy stared at his friend before he started laughing. "Hell yes, let's get her a typewriter."

They took typewriter buying very seriously. After a few days, they decided on an Underwood 3-Bank Portable in green. They wait until Clara was having breakfast to sneak into her room and set it up.

Clara hobbled back into her room after breakfast. As she walked, she considered her secret. Unbeknownst to anyone, Richard mailed off a special project for her a few days prior. If her spec manuscript landed her the assignment, she would make enough money to support herself writing. She'd have choices, she thought to herself, including making a life of her choosing. 

On her desk, next to her notebooks and pens, was a brand new typewriter. Clara blinked in disbelief-if she got the job, she planned on buying one. As her hands ran over it she noted it was one of the new style ones and in a particularly lovely shade of green. Her father's calling card was propped on the keys. She picked it up. On the back, was written "Much Love, Your Father." She smiled.

"Eddie, who is in with my father?" Clara asked when she made her way around the suite to the office.

"Misters Darmody and Harrow," Eddie responded and was about to tell her he'd announce her when Clara knocked on the office door.

"It's me; I'm coming in," Clara announced. The three men look up, surprised. Clara typically steered clear of the office.

Jimmy evaluated her when she comes in. She looked much, much better than she did in the days after the attack. Her left leg was still badly torn up, the bandages and scrapes visible under her stocking, but she seemed more or less okay. Maybe it didn't impact her to deeply, Jimmy thought.

"I love it!" Clara said excitedly, smiling directly at her father. "I can't believe you knew to get it for me!"

Jimmy caught Richard's eye.

"Well, I wanted you to be happy," Nucky said, hedging his bets. What the hell had James bought her?

"It's just...I've been so lost since my job with the War Department ended. It wasn't the most important work, but it taught me what it was to work. I knew what was to be busy all day, for my days to be full, to really be tired, and feel like I deserved to be tired. My days had purpose. I had money that was mine because I earned it, not because it was given to me. I knew my job would go back to a man when the war ended, and I'm so happy it ended. I just...I didn't want my life to go back to dress fittings and paying social calls and attending luncheons with people who only want me there because I'm your daughter. But it was so easy to fall back into all of that. It was," Clara blinked hard, and her voice cracked, "it was easy to agree to marry a man I can't stand when you asked me to accept him."

Jimmy slipped her a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket. Finally, he thought; finally, Clara was going to save herself from the entanglement Nucky twisted her into. Jimmy was beginning to be afraid that Clara might actually marry the bastard. Or that the Blaine would threaten Clara again, and Richard would end him. Jimmy stood behind her right shoulder, ready to provide support.

Nucky was still holding the pen that had been in his hand when his daughter burst into the room. Out of all the potential complications he had considered when planning his day, his spoiled princess of a daughter interrupting his day to give a speech about the value of a hard day's work and her distaste for a man who was the perfect husband for her hadn't been on the list.

The way Clara and Jimmy stood before him suddenly made them-the rebellious, headstrong children who let other men's decisions change their lives with that stupid war-look like the kids they weren't far removed from being. He could almost imagine they were there to argue their case about why they thought he should take them to New York for a Giants game, or let them camp overnight on the beach.

"I can't marry him, Father. I can't. I can't bear the thought of him touching me, of having to eat breakfast with him," Clara's voice cracked again, " of listening to him brush his teeth."

"You've had a rough few weeks. It's normal to feel uncertain. Darcy can give you the life you want." Nucky brushed away his daughter's complaints, not hearing her plea for him to save her from ruining her life.

"No, he can't. Any life with Darcy isn't a life I want," Clara insisted.

Nucky sighed. "You are young. You think life is this," he said, gesturing around the suite.

"No, I don't. I don't think that. I don't even think that I want that. I think that I want a life where when my fiance takes my hand, I don't flinch." Clara thought of how her hand fit completely into Richard's, how his hands were so well-kept except for the calloused edges, and compared that to the cold, wet, heavy feeling of Darcy's hands on her. "I want my desire to be an actual person with passions and thoughts and beliefs to be respected, not tolerated at best, or seen as a childish impulse."

Nucky recognized an unwinnable battle. "Fine. I'm not going to force you to marry someone who is destined to make you unhappy."

Clara reached for her father's hand. "Thank you."

When she left the room, Nucky looks at Jimmy. "What did you buy her?"

"A typewriter."

"A typewriter?" Nucky shook his head and got back to work. He should have sent Eddie to buy her a bracelet. A damn typewriter.

* * *

Clara called Darcy as soon as she left her father's office. She was going to end it now before her father had second thoughts or anything else happened. Clara wanted her freedom. Looking down at her hand, it occurred to her that she wasn't wearing her engagement ring. Richard had taken it off when he washed the gravel out of her hands weeks ago, and it was still sitting on her bedside table.

"I'm going. To be in, Mmm. The hall," Richard told her when Darcy arrived. Clara nodded and took a deep breath.

"Darcy, I think it's time we admit that we are not well suited for each other and let each other go," Clara told him as she entered the drawing-room, far too anxious to worry about niceties.

"What?"

"I don't wish to marry you. It's time for us to end the engagement."

Darcy crossed the room, and Clara backed up. "Do you think some little city politician's daughter breaks up with me?"

Clara swallowed hard as she fought the instinct to smooth her skirt or pull free a piece of hair. Her hands were shaking, but she didn't want Darcy to see. Suddenly, she could feel O'Bryan's blood blowing across her face.

"Are you. All right?" Richard opened the door.

"Mr. Blaine is just-" Clara began.

Darcy looked over at Richard. "Oh, wonderful. How appropriate. Clara's pet freak creeping at the door." He looked back at Clara. "Is that why you are breaking off with me so that you can whore around with mask man? What's under the mask..."

Richard moved with impressive speed and had the larger Darcy on the ground in seconds. One hand circled Darcy's neck, and with the other, he removed his mask.

"Is this. What you wanted to see?"

Clara went very still. Richard's voice was usually very calm. Now the low growl she'd become so accustomed to was full of fury and anger.

"Richard, Darcy isn't worth this," she told him.

"Get off me," Darcy gasped.

"Apologize," Richard ordered.

There was silence before Darcy rasped out, "Sorry."

"No. Apologize. To Clara," Richard repeated in the same furious growl.

Clara approached them and put her hand on Richard's shoulder. "Please let him up. I just want him to leave. I don't care about his apologies. Please." Richard nodded and slowly got up. Clara continued, "Darcy, you need to leave."

Richard walked towards the window.

"Believe me. I can't wait to get out of this nuthouse."

Clara waited until he exited the room before she crossed it. She took a shaky breath before she reached out and touched Richard on the arm. "I'm so sorry that Darcy is an awful person."

"I'm sorry. If I. Scared you," Richard was looking down and his hands twisted together.

"I mean, maybe don't choke every rude person?" Clara said, trying to diffuse the tension between them. "But Darcy deserved it. I knew I wasn't going to be able to marry him because I thought about how you sat with me and held my hand when I had the morphine nightmares. With you, I felt safe. With Darcy," Clara shook her head. "Honestly? I can't even imagine him caring enough to do it. And I haven't even told you thank you. For saving me. For...everything else."

"Mmm." Richard let himself look up briefly. As always, he was searching Clara's face for revulsion, but other than the morning he terrified Emily Schroeder he hadn't seen it.

Suddenly he wanted, badly, to tell her saving her was the only good thing he'd done since he was placed on a transport ship headed to France. Saving her made him think his continued existence wasn't a cruel joke by God. He wanted to tell her that since she and Jimmy burst into his life in Chicago, he didn't go to bed wishing every night that he wouldn't wake up in the morning. That protecting her meant he got to spend time with her, and suddenly there were hundreds of small moments every day where he almost felt happy. Sometimes he actually felt like the person he was and not the monster he became. Even though he knew Clara would never think of him like he sometimes allowed himself to think of her, that having a normal woman like her think of him as a friend was all he can over hope for...most days she smiled at him or seemed genuinely happy to see him and it was enough.

Clara sighed when he looked away again. She let her hands smooth her skirt without thinking about it, mostly because she was fighting the need to step closer to Richard.

"And Richard, you aren't something that would ever give me nightmares. I'm so sorry, that's what you thought." Clara turned to look out the window, because she wasn't sure she could continue if he could see her face. "I wish I could tell you what the nightmare was about, but I can't. I've never...I told Jimmy right when it happened when we were children, but I've never," she had to take a big gasping breath to keep herself from crying and turned back to face him, "I've never talked about it since. But it's not...it isn't...I like your face."

Richard stepped back, but Clara stepped forward with him. She brushed back a lock of his hair that had come loose in the struggle with Darcy, and Richard went absolutely still. "It's a very nice face that had something excruciating happen to it, which I'm so terribly sorry about."

Her breath was ragged, and she felt Richard turn his his head slightly into her hand. She continued smoothing his hair, and started to take another half-step closer to him.

Jimmy burst through the door and was startled to see Clara stroking Richard's hair. Richard jumped back and Clara looked down at her hand when they noticed him.

Jimmy looked back and forth between them. Jesus Christ, Jimmy thought, he should have seen it before.

"Nuck needs us, Richard."

Richard was sent out to check on a delivery for Mr. White, and when he returned, he was shocked to see people all over the apartment. Some of the people were women. Some were naked. Some are worse than naked-they were wearing corsets made of black leather that left parts of their bodies (the parts people usually keep covered) out. One woman was bent over, her rear end in the face of someone Richard was reasonably certain is a judge.

"Good, you are back. Clara is in her room. Make sure the hallway to her room stays locked," Jimmy told him, while a woman wearing only a negligee clung to his arm.

"What's. This?" Richard asked, looking down at the floor and wringing his cap in his hands.

"Nucky's having a party." Jimmy answered with a grin.

He unlocked the hall door and heard music drifting down the hall from Clara's room.

"It's. Richard. Mmm. Harrow," he gasped out as he knocked.

Clara smiled, always amused at how Richard announced himself like some other Richard ever came to her door, like she wouldn't know his voice, or even the sound of his knock. "Come in."

She was sitting on the floor with a notebook in her lap when he opened her door.

"Ah, your first Enoch Thompson party," she said laughingly when she saw his expression. "Now you understand why I have a phonograph in my room. It's so I can block the sounds." Clara stood up. "I understand if you'd rather be out there. I've lived through these parties locked in this room since I was little, what's one more?"

"Mmm, no," Richard said, terrified at the idea of going back out into the suite. A small voice in his head wandered why he felt less awkward sitting in Clara's room. Clara was lovely, and fancy, and rich. Even before, when he was a real man, Clara would have felt like someone from another galaxy. She smiled up at him, and he let his eye go over the faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the bright blue of her eyes, the way her blouse fluttered over her collarbone, and the bit of creamy skin with another light cropping of freckles that disappeared down her blouse. He swallowed hard. He couldn't let himself think of Clara like this. She was his friend, she was his employer's daughter, she was Jimmy's sister (more or less).

"Good, then you can have dinner with me," Clara walked out to her balcony and beckoned him to follow.

There were two small tables, one in front of the other.

"See? You get privacy, and I don't have to eat alone." Clara moved to the front table and took the cover off her plate. She knew the situation was fraught. Richard had never eaten in front of her, and she worried about when he did eat. Part of her wanted to tell him she could guess it was messy, but she didn't particularly care. She'd watched the Commodore eat, and it couldn't be as bad as that. Part of her just wanted to tell him as long as she was with him she didn't care about much. Clara took a shaky breath and realized Richard hadn't moved. "Have you eaten?" she asked quietly.

He shook his head.

Clara shrugged. "Then come have dinner with me. I promise I won't turn around unless you say its okay."

He swallowed and moved to the table behind her. Clara was as good as her word, and she didn't turn around. The food smelled good; Clara had ordered pot roast and mashed potatoes, and he could eat both of those things. She'd even ordered peach cobbler, which was his favorite. He wondered if she knew that. It took him a few minutes, but finally he took off the mask and set it on the table before bending his head to pray.

Clara heard the sound of metal striking the table but kept staring out into the ocean as she ate her dinner. It was a quiet meal, but she couldn't remember when she'd enjoyed dinner more.

* * *

Out in the suite, Nucky motioned to Jimmy. "Did Harrow get back?"

"Yep. I sent him to make sure no one tries to get into Clara's room."

Nucky looked pensive.

"What?" Jimmy finally asked.

"I was thinking that I would never let any bodyguard, except you, get this close to Clara. But with that poor bastard's face, what does it matter?"

Once more, Jimmy was struck that Nucky didn't know the two people who he claimed to know best-Jimmy and Clara-at all.


	6. Original Sin-November 1920

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of season one. Just like in the real final episode of season one, there's violence, and references to Gillian's abuse as a child.
> 
> However, we also get our first glimpses of Arnold Rothstein, Al Capone, and Meyer Lansky. Clara admits to how much she knows-and doesn't know-about her father's business. Clara and Jimmy talk about their feelings. And? The Stratemeyer Syndicate shows up.

"She's basically my sister," Jimmy told the assorted gathering. "What happened to Clara can't be allowed to stand."

"I think the deal between Mr. Rothstein and myself addresses the violence against Clara," Nucky retorted, annoyed at Jimmy's unspoken implication that he wasn't seeking retribution for the attack on Clara. Who was his own damn daughter, Nucky thought,

"Gentleman, no one in this room wants our enemies to believe that going after daughters, sisters, mothers, wives is acceptable. We all have things we do not wish to lose," Arnold Rothstein said smoothly. The other men in the room nodded. "In fact, Mr. Thompson, I would like to apologize to the young lady personally for my part in her ordeal."

"That won't be necessary," Nucky replied.

"I'm afraid I must insist," Rothstein said.

Nucky nodded. It wasn't worth arguing over, he decided. He rang the bell, and when Eddie appeared asked him to fetch Clara and Harrow.

Minutes later the most interesting pairing Arnold Rothstein had ever feasted his eyes upon (and he was a man who sought out the interesting, the absurd, and the unusual the way most men seek out breakfast) walked into the room. The girl was lovely. The man...it struck Rothstein that the man had been lovely. That mane of dark hair, the chiseled jaw, the height, the build. But the strange metal mask he wore destroyed the illusion, and something made the uncovered part of his mouth pull strangely. The war, he presumed. What else could destroy such a young man? He barely looked older than the girl. For all their differences-his cheap but immaculate clothing, her simple but expensive dress; his destroyed beauty versus her lovely wholeness-the electricity between them was almost palpable.

"Frankenstein! How ya' doin'?" The tubby little man from Chicago called from his corner, Al...Something. Rothstein couldn't recollect. He hadn't seemed important enough to commit to memory.

Torrio shook his head at Capone’s inability to control his mouth.

Rothstein was busy watching the main event. Clara Thompson walked into the room wearing a carefully composed social face, one he assumed she had honed since childhood. There was no doubt Thompson had raised this girl to be a princess. She practically glowed with money and good manners. That social face, Rothstein imagined, rarely slipped. Yet when the Chicagoan spoke for one moment the mask fell and the look Miss Thompson shot him was pure ice. She also took the smallest of steps towards the man in the mask. Their hands weren't touching, Rothstein noted, but they could be.

"My apologies, I don't believe anyone has ever referred to me in that way?" Clara said, refusing to break eye contact with the odious little man with the potato face.

The man in the mask spoke. "He knows me. From Chicago. He calls me. Frankenstein." The low growl was almost inhuman, made worse by a clicking noise that followed some words, Rothstein thought.

Jimmy looked down at his feet. Nucky had once told Jimmy to stop fighting at school (Gillian was having an affair with the father of one of their schoolmates; Jimmy couldn't walk down the hall without someone saying something about his ma). One kid, though, one kid needed it. Jimmy had been considering risking Nucky's wrath one afternoon on the playground when the kid wouldn't shut his mouth, but before he could act Clara jumped down from the top of the monkey bars on top of the little bastard and proceeded to blacken his eye before anyone could pull her off. She had the exact same look on her face now.

"He thinks you a mad scientist, or simply a physician?" Clara asked, and slightly turned her body so she was making eye contact with the masked man's good eye. Ah, Rothstein saw, she still thinks him lovely and it grieves her that others don't see it.

Rothstein snorted out loud, saw Meyer Lansky and Jimmy Darmody fight to hide laughter, and Thompson briefly close his eyes at his daughter’s retort. The girl's literary critique went over the heads of the rest. The masked man allowed himself a slight smile, or what Rothstein assumed was a smile.

"I think it safe to assume that our friend from Chicago has not read the book," Rothstein replied. "He is simply being unforgivably rude to, if I presume correctly, the man who saved your life?"

"My daughter, Clara Thompson, and Richard Harrow, who works for me. Mr. Harrow did save Clara," Nucky interjected. Jesus, why couldn't Torrio control that little troll? Of course, it was Nucky’s daughter who refused to ignore the insult. Nucky knew controlling his young wasn't one of his strengths, either.

"Miss Thompson, I wanted to apologize for what happened to you. I had no idea, of course, that the people I was doing business with could be capable of such savagery. However, I did go into business with them, and unknowingly played a part in the chain of events that led to your attack," Rothstein said in his most charming voice.

The social mask was back, Rothstein saw, and she turned a charming, practiced smile towards him. "Mr. Rothstein, no one is responsible for the actions of others. Who was it that said 'we are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.' I'm sure there were many contributing factors that led to those men deciding to attack me."

"Marcus Aurelius," Rothstein replied. "Which I'm sure you know." Clara smiled again, less practiced.

"That will be all, Clara. Harrow, stay,” Thompson directed.

Rothstein watched the million microscopic ways Harrow and Clara parted from each other. He made a mental note of this delicious find, made sweeter by the fact that no one else-not the man that spoke of Clara as a sister, not her father-seemed to notice what was going on before their eyes.

Later, Meyer Lanskey drove Rothstein to the station to catch a train to Chicago and commented that most girls found Charlie Luciano attractive but Miss Thompson never even looked at him. Little Meyer, Rothstein reflected. He might turn into a fine collector himself someday.

* * *

When Clara returned to her room she saw her mail stacked next to the typewriter. The return address on the top letter was 17 Madison Avenue. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized the envelope was fat, and her hands shook so with excitement she dropped the envelope on the floor as she tried to open it.

"Clara," Richard said from the door, which Clara had left open. When she turned to face him he thought something was wrong. Her eyes were incredibly bright.

"I got it. I got it. I wrote a _Tom Swift_ book on speculation, and they liked it well enough that they've assigned me a _Bobbsey Twin_ novel and a _Ruth Fielding_ novel to write! I'm a real writer. I'm going to make actual money," she actually laughed a little out of sheer happiness.

Richard's mouth twitched. "You wrote. A _Tom Swift_ book?"

Clara nodded. "Jimmy and I used to love them. When he came back from Chicago he gave me _Tom Swift and His Undersea Search_. I read it, and thought, I can write that. Once I understood how it all worked, I wrote one and sent it to this place called the Stratemeyer Syndicate. They liked it! Not enough to let me write _Tom Swift_ , but they've assigned me books from two other series."

"Mmm. I thought. Victor Appleton wrote. _Tom Swift_ ," Richard replied, still confused.

"Victor Appleton is just a name ghostwriters like me write under," Clara answered.

"I gave. Jimmy that book," Richard told her.

Clara smiled, "Well, thank you, then! I would have never, ever thought to consider writing children's books without reading it. And now? I might have a career."

"I'm leaving. For Philadelphia. I won't be back until tomorrow. Then you won't need protection," Richard said.

Clara's face fell. She turned back towards her desk, pushing down a cascade of emotion, as she twisted a stray ribbon into her hands. All good things end, she knew, and being shot at in front of her home wasn't a good thing. But having Richard around to talk to, to be with...she wasn't lonely. She'd been lonely since when? Since her mother died, since she left Angela and Tommy in New York, since she said goodbye to Rose Grenville at the end of the war and left for D.C.? She couldn't remember, she just knew with Richard she wasn't lonely. 

"I'm going to miss you. You have to promise you'll still be my friend," Clara said, already grieving the lack of him.

"If you want to. Be friends with me," Richard answered, looking up at her for a moment. He was happy Clara was going to be safe. He couldn't tell her how he was haunted by the shot he made that went inches from her head, by the thought he could have gotten into Mr. Thompson's blue car and not heard her scream for him. Clara being safe was the most important thing. But he liked knowing she was on the side of the wall when he went to bed. Clara smiling at him in the morning, or sitting next to him to talk about anything from the magazine that arrived that day to her thoughts about Harding. He knew securing her safety meant going back to his boarding house and not seeing her.

"You were very plucky. And adventurous taking on. Capone."

She smiled as best she could, trying to hide her feelings. Fear as she reconsidered his words were sinking into all of her other feelings. "It's easy to be brave when I have you with me,"

Richard twisted his hands nervously as she spoke.

"Just...I'm the daughter of this house. I know what's about to happen. Please be safe, and let me know when you are back in Atlantic City and are okay, because," Clara blinked rapidly, "I'm going to worry about you until I know."

Clara took a deep breath before leaning up to kiss his good cheek. She didn't move away quickly. She held her face against his, letting herself have that moment to know what his skin felt like under her mouth, what his beard felt like against her skin, what his skin smelled like up close.

Richard couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't think while Clara was pressed against him. The smell of her orange soap was almost overwhelming, and triggered a memory deep inside him. His hands moved up to touch her, but he pushed them back down. Her skin was soft against his, and she was so very close to him. He wanted her to move, and he wanted her to stay there forever.

When he left, Clara sat down, pulled out the information from the Stratemeyer Syndicate, and started planning her first novel. It was hours before she let herself get up, and then it hit her.

At some point, when she was very young, she realized that Jimmy's life with Gillian wasn't normal. She'd always thought that was the moment that a thread tied with knots and made of lava embedded itself into the very core of her being. That thread was always just under the surface, weaving worry and concern for Jimmy into the texture of her days. When he left for the war it grew from a thread to a heavy rope that some days felt like it might consume her, as it encircled her thoughts and her feelings. Was he safe? Was he scared? Was he cold? Was he hungry? That lava rope is why she left college and got a job working for the War Department in New York, so that at least every day she knew was doing something to make it more feasible that Jimmy could come home.

Now she knew she had another molten cord melting into her soul. This one felt like copper, always giving off little bits of electricity, never quite letting Richard drop from her mind. Those copper threads were pulsating in fear. Clara took a deep breath. He was a sharpshooter. She had seen his deadly aim, she reassured herself. He'd be okay.

The young face of the boy, really, who tried to pull her into the car floated through her mind's eye, but Clara resolutely pushed it back. She simply could not allow herself to think of it.

Instead, she let herself wander into Richard's room. Tomorrow or the next day he'd come for his things, and this room would go back to storage for trunks and suitcases. She could feel the loneliness that was waiting for her, feel the Princess of the Tower once more becoming her identity. A life full of people but devoid of friends.

His room was so neat. No stacks of books and papers, or hairbrushes randomly laid down like her own room. He straightened it up with military precision. She gave in and laid down on his bed, sick with worry about whatever deal with the devil Jimmy and Richard were carrying out.

Something struck her thigh. She reached under the mattress and found a book. That's taking neatness a step too far, she thought. She idly opens it, curious as to what Richard read.

Almost every page of the book was pasted over with a variety of pictures cut from magazines or newspapers. Each page represented some carefully constructed vision of family life or romantic relationships. One particularly beautiful page had several different pictures overlapping to display a field with bluebirds. A few more pages in, and Clara found a picture of Richard, from before. It was his enlistment picture. She ran her finger across the left side of his face. The loss was almost unimaginable, she realized. He was so incredibly handsome. How could anyone's psyche deal with the sudden change from being good looking to being someone whose face made children scream? When Clara said his face doesn't bother her, she meant it. She could see this man in Richard every time she looked at him, maybe because she first saw him in profile, because her first thought was the he was handsome. Never, though, had she so clearly understood how the loss must torture him. 

Careful not to get tears in the book, she kept turning pages, feeling like she was seeing a part of him she'd never known was there. That was when she finds a layout devoted to her. The _Good Housekeeping_ article from the magazine she left in Jimmy's room in Chicago, other articles she had published since, a paper napkin from the hotel, a drawing Margaret's son Teddy made, showing the Tin Man next to a stick figure with yellow hair (Clara assumed that was her). She realized, then, that she's looking at something he never meant anyone to see and put the book away.

Later that night Clara thought of the scrapbook. Her fingers worked back and forth over her blanket, thinking about the loneliness encapsulated in the book. Richard was imagining a life he believed he'd never have, she thought. He was reaching for something lovely in only the way he thought he can. Part of her realized Richard might be the first man she knew who actually saw such mundane things as wives and children and beauty as a vital part of a man's existence. More than ever, she missed his presence on the other side of her wall. 

Richard did come back to tell her he's fine, he did get his things, and her life somehow became much quieter. How was the possible, she wondered, when Richard barely spoke?

It wasn't quiet the next night at the Ritz-Carlton. Her father was throwing an election night preparty, but everyone was clothed so she was playing hostess at her father's request for a bit. She was feigning interest in something a ward boss was saying when she saw Jimmy, who was obviously drunk, being dragged into the hallway by her father. She smilingly stepped away from the ward boss and prepared to smooth over whatever was going between her father and Jimmy.

It won't be the first fight between the two Clara's mediated; she doubted it would be the last.

The way Jimmy was talking as she approached, though, made her pause to listen out of sight. Slowly, slowly Jimmy's words started to coalesce in her mind.

Her father. Gillian. The Commodore. Jimmy. It all started to come together to form a complete picture. She thought she was going to throw up. She thought she was going to start running and never stop. Her father, the Deputy Sheriff and freshly married to her mother. The Commodore, then holding the job as County Treasurer and as much the King of the County as Clara's father was now.

But different. Whatever criticisms Clara had of her father, however she disliked some of his mistresses, they were all grown women. The Commodore liked them young. Very young. And when he asked the ambitious young deputy to bring him a young girl, to bring him the runaway he had noticed on the Boardwalk.

And the deputy, being ambitious, made the young girl trust him and then turned her over to the Commodore. And then nine months later Jimmy was born. And the deputy? Became sheriff. And a few months after Jimmy's birth, the new sheriff and his wife had their first (only) baby.

Clara remembered how her mother looked out for Gillian, tried to help her with Jimmy. It was her mother who treated Jimmy like her brother, Clara thought. It felt like her stomach was going to fall out of her body as she considered the ramifications, as the veil underneath which she had lived her life lifted.

The first clear memory Clara had of Gillian, was from when she and Jimmy were only about three. Clara thought of how young Gillian seemed at sixteen. Now she imagined her at thirteen. Her cousin Nora, Uncle Eli's oldest daughter, she was almost thirteen. To Clara, she was a child. A little girl. And so would Gillian have been. Clara imagined the Commodore, who must have been in his fifties, touching the child. The horrible wet, heavy feeling of Darcy's hands on her came back. The way that when he kissed her she felt like the weight of his face on hers was going to suffocate her. Clara was an adult woman; how much worse would it be for a child. How much worse if it didn't stop at unwanted kisses and touches.

"Jimmy's right, isn't he?" She finally spoke, startling her father, after Jimmy walked away. "You would sacrifice anyone for an advantage. You were willing to see me married to someone I find repulsive. Gillian was a child, a child, and you just handed her over to that old man. And how could you tell Jimmy you don't love him? Jimmy...you raised him just as much, maybe even more, as you raised me. How can you not love a child that you raised?" Clara blinks back tears. "Do you even love me, or was I just another obligation?"

Nucky sighed in frustration as Clara added to his bad day. "You and Jimmy talk a lot about being adults, yet you revert to childishness..."

Clara shook her head. "No. You don't get to treat us-and not just us, but Eli, your own brother like this."

Unbeknownst to Clara, Eli had been quietly watching and startled when he realized that his niece understood her father's perfidy against him.

"You think because we're family, you can just treat us like pieces on your chessboard. We only exist to you as potential sacrifices or advantages to the game you play. You never even bother to look back, to understand the destruction you cause." Clara walked away, shaking with anger. Her father called to her, but she didn't look back.

She wrapped her heaviest coat over the green velvet party dress she'd meant to wear to the election night party at Babette's and took to the Boardwalk. First, she wandered aimlessly, her entire life replaying in front of her eyes. The money behind every luxury, every treat traced back to her father's betrayal of a child. Again, the boy who tried to pull her into the car flashed in front of her eyes. She had told Richard she was her father's daughter, that she understood the ugliness that powered the prettiness of her father's life, of her own.

What she hadn't known was the original sin that made it all possible.

Jimmy was aimlessly wandering the beach near dawn when he saw a girl asleep on the steps down to the beach. Clara, he thought.

"What the hell?" he asked her as he woke her up.

"I knew you'd come this way," she answered, rubbing her face. Jimmy sat facing her on the step below her, his bad leg straight out in front of him, each of them leaned against the railings. He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and handed it to her. She took a slow drag.

"It's not that he doesn't love you, Jimmy. I think he doesn't love any of us. Maybe he loved my mother? Maybe if Enoch Junior had lived, he could have loved him? But the rest of us? I'm not sure he thinks of us as fully human. He's shown these last months that we are all disposable-you, me, Eli- if push comes to shove."

Clara's tone wasn't even bitter, Jimmy thought, just resigned.

Clara reached forward and put her hands on his wrists. "I love you," she said.

Jimmy knew it was true. Clara might be the only person whose love didn't hurt, didn't cost, or come with a contract's worth of stipulations.

"I love you, too," he says and meant it. They looked at each other in the dawn light coming in off the ocean.

Clara thought that Jimmy might the only person who loves her, really, as they silently shared a cigarette for a few more moments. Her father was a good ruler, she thought, trying to look at the situation with a detached eye even in the midst of her anger and sadness. But he didn't understood his inner circle. Taking the sheriff's office away from Eli, refusing to tell Jimmy that he loved him, refusing to apologize for his role in how Jimmy came to be...

And Darcy. Clara shivered at the thought of Darcy's hands on her body, of having to subjugate her sense of self to fit Darcy's expectations of what his wife should be. And yes, her father had relented. But was he willing to let her plan on her own life? What would his reaction be to her new writing contract, or? Or if he had seen her hand on Richard's face. Clara exhaled slowly. Her father had set the stage for a rebellion. Did he sense it? Did he understand it was his brother and foster son behind it, did he sense Clara's own ambivalence? And what of the Commodore, she thought. As horrid as her father's sin was, the Commodore's was worse, and she trusted him not at all to protect Jimmy. Even though Jimmy was his son. She wanted to retch. Her life as she knew it was over, she thought. They were all standing on a precipice.

"Whatever happens," Clara said. "I'll be on your side, for almost anything. I just...Please don't put me in a position where I have to make an unbearable choice. But if that's going to happen, please tell me so that I can be the one who makes it."

Jimmy nodded, slowly. It was a promise he meant to keep. It was a promise he would inevitably break.


	7. It's Not Like They Are Going to Elope-December 1920

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy, Angela, Richard, Clara, and Tommy go to New York so that Jimmy and Angela can marry.  
> Trigger Warning-Clara recounts the story of her mother and Enoch Junior.

**Thursday, December 30, 1920**

A group of Episcopalians cornered Nucky in the lobby of the Ritz, but listening to them only took half his attention. He watched the lobby for other potential contacts with the other half of his brain. That's when he saw his daughter, dressed in a patterned gray brocade coat with wide cuffs and lapels and a matching hat over a gray wool dress, step off the elevator with Richard Harrow. The latter was carrying a two-toned blue suitcase that was part of a set Nucky bought Clara when she graduated from high school while Clara carried the matching hat box. Harrow was undoubtedly much better dressed than he had been when he first came to work for him, Nucky thought. The man was wearing a greenish double-breasted coat with leather gloves and looked much less like a country hick. Clara was animated and talking happily, and Harrow, well, who the hell could tell his mood?

"Why was Clara and her suitcase walking out of the elevator with Harrow?" Nucky asked Eddie when he returned to the suite.

"Clara is going to New York with the Darmodys for the weekend. Mr. Harrow is escorting her to the train. Is this against your wishes?" Eddie responded.

Oh, yes. Nucky vaguely remembered Clara saying something a few days ago. Truth be told, he was so busy getting Margaret and the children settled into the new house that he rarely saw Clara these days. Margaret coming back to him was a relief, and he enjoyed the simplicity of spending time with her young children. Far easier than spending time with Jimmy or Clara. When he was in the suite, he mostly just heard the infernal clattering of the keys of that damn typewriter. Days had even passed before he had seen Clara again after their fight on election night, The next time Clara saw him she simply acted like nothing was wrong, and Nucky went along with it. It seemed so much easier.

"No, she's hardly going to elope with Harrow, and she said something about going to New York for New Years with James and Angela."

On the train, Jimmy looked around him. Angela. Richard. Clara. Tommy. He knew he was doing the right thing. It was long past time he married Angela, made the polite fiction of their marriage a reality. Tommy would be old enough soon to know his parents weren't married, and Jimmy would be damned if any playground bully would taunt his son with the cry of bastard. Besides, Jimmy had all of his favorite people with him. They were young. They had money. It was going to be a great weekend.

"This," Jimmy announced, "is going to be the best weekend of our lives."

"I'm glad your expectations aren't too high," Angela said with a laugh but kissed him on the cheek anyway.

"And I'm going to New Pork!" Tommy said happily.

"I still think we should have left him with Ma," Jimmy said.

Angela caught Clara's eye. Not telling Gillian, having their wedding weekend to themselves, was the rare fight Angela went all-in on.

"Hey, that's what I'm here for," Clara said. "Built-in babysitting."

Tommy jumped from his father's lap across the aisle into Richard's, and stuck his feet into Clara's lap.

"Please, Tommy, make yourself comfortable," Clara said.

"Richard, also sit me?" Tommy asked.

Clara looked up at Richard. "I mean, what more fun could you possibly have than spending time with Tommy and me? You'll get to see all the best carousels and ice cream stands."

Richard looked away before answering. "Yes."

Their hotel, the Biltmore, was attached to Grand Central Station, so they were quickly in the suite. Angela and Jimmy left to get their marriage license, leaving Tommy with Clara and Richard.

Richard read one of the brochures on the coffee table. "We could. Go ice skating. Here at the hotel. They turn one the gardens. Into a rink. In the winter."

"I've never been," Clara said. "But it sounds like fun, and Tommy could stand to burn off some energy."

"I'll teach you," Richard says, not making eye contact with her.

Clara watched Richard lace up his own skates and then Tommy's with quiet confidence. "Do you think I should wait?" she asked.

"Why?"

"Because you only have two hands, and you also have two people who have never stepped foot on the ice," Clara answered.

"You'll be fine," he said.

Clara nodded, far less sure. Once on the ice, she was even less confident. She stood against the wall while Richard held Tommy's hands and got him used to gliding around the ice. He's going to be a good father one day, Clara thought and felt heat creep up her cheeks. She stared down at her feet. She knew what she was actually thinking.

He'll be a good father to their children one day. Her breath caught in her chest, and her face grew even hotter. She thought of how she felt when she saw him asleep at Margaret's, when her pajama-clad leg brushed his. The smell of his neck when he carried her into the Ritz off the street. The feel of his hair under her hand.

She can't have these feelings for Richard. He's her friend, she thought wildly. He's...she can't even imagine how he would react. It took weeks of basically living together for him to make regular eye contact with her.

But he leaned into her hand when she touched his face. He held her hand when she was scared. He...

"Clara!" Tommy cried happily as they skated towards her.

"You are doing great!" Clara shook her head to clear her thoughts, and forced the bright smile, the bright voice she used with Tommy into place. Richard was just barely holding on to him, and when he let go, Tommy didn't realize and kept skating smoothly.

"Look at you, buddy," Clara heard Jimmy's voice behind her. Jimmy and Angela retrieved Tommy, and Richard held his hand out to her. She took it. She always took it.

**Thursday Night**

"You look smashing," Clara told Angela in the master bedroom, which the girls had overtaken to get ready in, leaving Jimmy and Richard to Clara and Tommy's room and bathroom. Angela wore a beaded black dress which, along with her bob, made her look incredibly modern and enticing as hell.

"You look pretty smashing yourself," Angela said, admiring Clara's green velvet dress with copper embroidery. "Do you have darker lipstick, though? I think it would look better with this dress."

Clara handed over her wooden tube of Molinard lipstick. "Are you happy?" Clara asked Angela quietly.

Angela carefully applied the dark red lipstick. "I'm happy everything is going to be settled. We should have married back in 1916 before Jimmy left. Or when he first came home. We couldn't go on like we were forever, not one thing or another.

"Are you happy?" Angela asked Clara, looking at her in the mirror. Clara looked better, Angela thought, shuddering to remember how Clara looked back in the last days of 1918. She'd wondered in those days if Clara would ever return to normal. She was no longer the girl she'd been before, but Clara was once more glowing and healthy looking.

"I'm happier than I was last year. Jimmy's back, I'm not engaged to a sea monster, I'm making money writing, I have friends I enjoy spending time with..."

"Richard," Angela interjected, and watched for a reaction. She'd seen the softness in Clara's eyes when she looked at Richard, the way Clara always found a reason to stand near him. The first time she'd noticed it was at Thanksgiving, but Richard had been so anxious that day, the first he'd spent at the Darmody apartment, that Angela had written it off as Clara trying to make Richard feel comfortable because he was used to spending time with her. By Christmas it was obvious they were purposefully trying to be near each other. Angela wasn't certain either of them realized it.

Had she ever felt that way about Jimmy, Angela wondered. Or had it just disappeared to fast? She'd certainly felt that way about Mary, hadn't she? She found a reason to look at Mary, to be near her, to touch her right up until the day Mary abandoned her.

"Richard, you, Jimmy, Tommy. Margaret, even. Margaret is taking over more of the duty engagements I used to do for my father, which is a relief," Clara started to say more but instead looked down at her hands.

"Something is bothering you. Could it be Gillian and the Commodore playing happy families with Jimmy?" Angela looked at Clara via the mirror. Jimmy had never talked about his father, ever. As far as Jimmy was concerned, his family was his mother, Clara, Nucky. Then suddenly the Commodore was sick, Gillian had moved in with him, and Jimmy danced attendance constantly. Angela didn't like it, but she couldn't put her finger on what, exactly, bothered her.

Clara nodded slightly. "Gillian...she loves Jimmy so much. And her life has been so difficult. Those facts don't make her less of a succubus, though. I'm always afraid she's going to suck the life right out of him. And the Commodore...we were terrified of him as children. My father, Nucky, he'd take us both over there. That house is a nightmare-those dead animals everywhere. And the Commodore seemed so creepy even then."

"But something happened with your father?" Angela prodded. She was all too well aware of Gillian's need to claim Jimmy for her own.

Clara looked down again. "I think what Jimmy needs from my father Nucky is just not capable of giving. Not even to me, really. I think my mother, and what happened with her, it just broke that part of him. Or maybe he never had it. But I don't Jimmy's going to find it with Gillian and the Commodore, either."

Clara looked up, and Angela had a dreadful realization when she looked into Clara's eyes.

Clara was scared.

When Clara and Angela left the bedroom, Jimmy grabbed Angela and kissed her hard. Clara skirted around them to join Richard on the sofa.

"Thank god you're here," Clara told him. "I need someone to talk to. I think we can write them off for the weekend."

"You look. Nice," Richard told her. It wasn't what he wanted to say.

"As do you." You look so handsome in that green suit, is what she thought. We match, she wanted to tell him. I wouldn't mind if you kissed me, she considered saying. Instead, she looked back at Angela and Jimmy and then smiled at Richard. "I think we only have one option."

She leaned over to the cocktail table where Jimmy had placed a bottle of bourbon, poured two glasses, put a straw in one. "Let's get blotto."

Tommy was tucked away in bed with a hotel sitter watching him, so they departed towards Greenwich Village. Angela was highly excited and brought along the Brownie camera Jimmy had given her for Christmas. Clara typically didn't enjoy forced fun or crowded spaces, but that night had the rarest of magic: they were young, everyone loved each other to some degree, and they wanted to have fun.

And so they did.

Jimmy picked up the camera to capture Angela and Clara dancing together like a couple of enthusiastic chorines. Clara picked up the camera at the speak with the velvet sofas and sat on the table to capture Jimmy and Richard, and then each man alone. Richard used it to capture Jimmy and Clara sharing a cigarette, something he had watched them do a hundred times without ever understanding why. Angela and Clara take their picture in a hallway with two mirrors, so their image is reflected into infinity. Clara grabs the camera back to capture Angela sitting on Jimmy's lap at the last speak. Angela captured Richard smiling shyly as Clara talked.

They were walking, Clara didn't know where to or why, and she realized she and Richard were holding hands as they strolled behind Jimmy and Angela. Had she took his hand, she tried to remember. She tightened her fingers around his but he didn't let go. Maybe he took her hand to keep her from falling, she thought.

"You grab a drink with both hands when you are a little smashed," she told him, trying to enunciate each word carefully, but then she couldn't remember why she started talking.

He looked down at her.

"I'm not teasing you. It's adorable," Clara stopped talking, and then anxiety surfaced underneath her happy buzz. "I'm sorry, I'm so smashed I can't feel my face."

"Hmm. Sometimes that happens. To me."

Clara looked up at him, wide-eyed, and then started to giggle. She laughed so hard she stumbles a bit, and he had to right her. Angela and Jimmy turn around.

"Jesus, I wish they'd just kiss already," Jimmy said and hails a cab.

> * * *

One small foot in her back woke Clara once more. She sat up on the edge of the bed. Her head was still swimming, and Tommy had now kicked her awake at least four times. It was amazing how someone as small as Tommy could take up an entire bed. He was now turned horizontally, which explained, she thought, why his feet were in her back. She considered trying to maneuver him back to position when she heard the noise. It sounded almost inhuman, a frantic growl of pain and horror.

Richard, she thought, and hurried into the living room where she saw him thrashing on the sofa. Nightmare, she thought. His hands were pulling at the damaged side of his face, blankets and pillows tossed on the floor. Leaning over him, she tried touching the undamaged side of his face to try and wake him up.

"Richard, it's okay, you are okay..."

"Help me," he growled and then grabbed at her as he trashed. She ended up between him and the back of the sofa. His eyes opened, so Clara thought he was almost awake.

"Richard, wake up. It's Clara. We are at the Biltmore in New York. You are having a bad dream. Shh, shh, it's okay."

His face felt like it was on fire. He couldn't remember who he was; he just felt the pain. Then he realized he wasn't alone. The smell of oranges, he thought. The hospital, or the dream? Where was he? He forced himself to open his eye, half-expecting to only see gauze. Instead, he saw Clara.

"Clara," his breathing was still ragged.

"It's okay. You were having a nightmare," she said softly.

She placed one hand on his healthy cheek and the tips of her fingers along his left jaw. "It's alright. I understand about nightmares," she said softly.

Richard looked up at her with an intensity that took her breath away.

"My face. Is still. Hot."

Clara readjusted so that her face was against his forehead, and then she gently kissed it. Richard went absolutely still.

"You don't feel hot. It must just be an aftereffect of the dream. You've scratched your face, though."

"Mmm. I do that. Sometimes. Drinking. Makes the dreams worse."

"I used to twist my hair so badly I'd wake it up with it in knots, or just laying on my pillow where I had pulled it out."

"Is that why. You sleep. With your hair braided?" Richard asked, looking at her braid, thinking of all the times he'd seen it before. All the times he had thought about how Clara looked when she was ready for bed.

"It is."

Clara's voice sounded far away. Richard thought she was about to get up. Instead, she turned her face so that he couldn't see her eyes.

"Alcohol and morphine, right?" She took a deep breath. She had never told anyone, but she knew she was about to tell Richard. It felt right, she decided. "I'm so sorry that you thought my nightmare had anything to do with you that night. My nightmares, they are old." 

"It's my mother and my, well, my brother. My mother, she really wanted a baby. It was difficult for her. She lost a lot of pregnancies, before me and after me. My uncle Eli, he tells me how sweet and wonderful she was, and I have a few memories like that, but mostly I just remember her being sad.

"When I was eight, she had finally had another baby. The boy she wanted. They named him Enoch Junior. He was tiny. Too small. My mother decided that he was so fragile she didn't want anyone in the house. She was afraid he'd catch something. So she kept me home from school. There were no nurses, no maids. Just us."

"You don't like. Walking past. The premature baby window," Richard said, remembering the times Clara would walk around the hospital/exhibit on the Boardwalk, always turning so she didn't have to look in the window.

"No, I don't."

"Your father?" Richard asked.

"He had just become county treasurer. He was busy. He was very busy. I didn't really see him after the day the baby was born. At first, it was okay. The baby was so small, he looked like a doll when he'd move his arms and legs, and his cry was tiny. After a couple of days, I didn't hear him cry, but my mother, she kept taking care of him. She rocked him all the time. She forgot to feed me, and I guess herself. We had bread and things, so I ate that. One day I was starving, and there wasn't any bread or crackers left. So I went into the nursery, and she was changing him.

"His hand," Clara started crying. "There was no skin, and his face was purple and swollen..." 

The horror of her words hit him. A tiny, hungry, scared Clara realizing her mother was caring for her brother's corpse.

"That night, when my dad came home, he saw. He took the baby, and it was buried. My mother, though, she couldn't accept it. Gillian and Jimmy came, and Gillian, she tried to reason with her. Gillian loved her. But...

"Anyway, the doctors told my father that she'd get better with time. So he hired a housekeeper, so at least we'd eat. One day, about a month later, I came home from school. It was a Wednesday, so the housekeeper had the afternoon off. The housekeeper, I don't remember her name, she had left me a piece of pie. Apple. It was apple. I heard my mother upstairs, but...I didn't want to be sad. Jimmy had walked me home, and we'd played pirates in the park, and I just wanted to eat the pie and not be sad for one afternoon.

"I went upstairs after I ate the pie, and heard her in the bathroom. I thought she was brushing her teeth. I heard a gurgling sound," her voice broke again.

Richard tightened his grasp because somehow he and Clara were wrapped around each other, the silk of her pajama top brushing against his arms. He wished he was a normal man who could kiss a crying girl and make it better. Clara warm and pressed up against him was doing things to him, but the thought of her moving away was unbearable. He knew that gurgle, he knew what must have happened to her mother, he wanted to make it better.

"It sounded wrong, though. So I opened the door. She'd used my father's razor and slit her wrists." Clara began to cry. "Do you know what I've never understood? Why wasn't I enough?"

"Mmm, no," he said as he tried to wipe her tears away.

"Anyway, after my father found us, he whisked me away to the Ritz-not as much space as we have now, just a few rooms. And that was that."

He had never understood why Clara seemed so lonely and lost. She was so beautiful and funny and nice, but there was something inside her that, that understood, he thought. He realized he wasn't wearing his mask, that Clara's forehead was leaned against the ruins of the left side of his cheek. For a moment he wanted to get up and run, but he could feel her breath against his neck. She was hurting, but she wasn't hurt. She was just here with him. He closed his eye. He hadn't ever told anyone, but he was going to tell her.

"It was the. Hmm. Summer of 1918. It was. Open warfare. I was in. A tree. I was picking off. German's with machine guns. I got four. Crews. They must have seen me. They shelled. The tree. The shell. Didn't hit me. It was. The tree. All I remember. Is light and heat and burning and pain. And then nothing. And then, operations. Operations. Morphine and the boat home, and then the trains, and then coming home. I thought I'd come home. As me. Instead, I came home. As this."

"Oh, Richard." Clara cursed herself. There were a million things she wanted to say, but she couldn't bring herself to say anything else. Whenever she needs to be truly modern, she always failed, she thought. She wanted to tell him... she was not sure what. So she allowed herself to stroke his hair, and he rubbed his thumb back and forth along her other hand, and soon they were both asleep. When he woke in the morning, she was gone.


	8. Knock You Sideways-Dec 1920

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was no way Jimmy and Angela go to New York to get married and the New York Baby Gangsters weren't going to make an appearance. In the show, Jimmy makes a deal with Luciano and Meyer in February of 1921; I've knocked that back to Jimmy making the deal in December. Richard and Clara continue dancing around each other; Luciano pushes Clara's Beserk Button; Jimmy and Clara confide in each other; Angela and Jimmy get married.

**Friday, December 31st, 1920-New York City**

As consciousness slowly returned, the first sensation Clara was aware of was being completely warm all over, but especially her back. Slowly she realized her back was warm because Richard's hand was pressed against it under her pajama top, and the rest of her was pressed pretty firmly against him. Her arm was damp from where the injured side of Richard's face rested on it. She closed her eyes and tried to memorize the moment. Since the morning in Margaret's living room, she knew she was, on some level, attracted to Richard. She had long known his friendship was essential to her. Since the day he saved her on the street, she knew their connection went deep. The day she kissed his cheek the day he went on the job in Philadelphia, she knew she cared about him. It wasn't until yesterday, though, when she saw him teaching Tommy to ice skate that she had any clue how deep her feelings went.

Loving people was dangerous. Everyone you loved left you vulnerable. They were all hostages to a fortune out of your control. Clara knew that loving people didn't ensure that they loved you back, or that they thought you were reason enough to stay.

The sound of an obviously fake cough made her turn her head. Jimmy stared straight at her with his mouth twitching. Damn Jimmy. Why wasn't he happily entwined with Angela and letting her enjoy a few minutes of pretending to still be asleep? She carefully slipped from the sofa and motioned for Jimmy to follow her out to the balcony, stopping only to retrieve her coat from the chair.

"Uh, what the hell, Clara?" 

"Uh, none of your business, Jimmy!" Clara responded.

Jimmy lit a cigarette, took a drag, and tried to hand it off to Clara, but she shook her head.

"It's not fair to toy with him."

Clara's eyes narrowed. "Is that what you think I'm doing?"

Jimmy rolled his tongue along his bottom teeth while he thought about his answer. "I don't have any fucking clue what you're doing. To be fair, I don't think you do, either."

Clara bit her lip and looked away. Jimmy laughed. "Oh hell, I always thought your biggest fear was being actually human. That's what is going on here-Richard makes you feel human, and it terrifies you."

"I'm so glad your semester at Princeton included studying Freud," Clara snapped.

Jimmy smirked at her again, and she was suddenly very sorry she was too old to pinch him. "It's not a semester of studying Freud. It's a lifetime of knowing you. I've never seen someone knock you sideways like this."

Clara gestures for the cigarette and takes a long, long drag. "It's your wedding day. Shouldn't we be talking about your romantic life?"

Jimmy takes back the cigarette and stares out into the skyline. "I'm marrying the mother of my child. What is else is there to say?"

"Maybe you could say you can't live another day without her? That you realized you need her in your life?"

Jimmy rolled his eyes. "Jesus, discovering you have feelings is going to turn you into a romantic. Where's cynical Clara?"

"It's not funny, Jimmy. This your life. It's Angela's life. Don't you love her?"

Jimmy laughs, but it's a cold, bitter laugh that Clara flinches at. "Did you know she was bedding a woman and tried to run away to Paris with her?"

Richard adjusts his mask and watches Jimmy and Clara on the balcony, waving their arms around and passing a cigarette back and forth. He was often confused by their relationship, and had been since Clara had shown up at the brothel, befriended him, and yelled at Jimmy in a remarkably short period of time.

"Do you know why they share cigarettes?" Angela asked from behind him.

Richard shook his head, not quite ready to speak, still trying to decide if the interlude with Clara last night actually happened or was part of his dream. He's reasonably sure he can smell the orange blossom perfume she wears on his arm, which spent most of the night wrapped around her.

"When they were teenagers, Nucky said Clara was 'not allowed to touch cigarettes.' So Jimmy would hold the cigarette, and she would smoke them. Clara told me once it was so they followed the letter, if not the spirit of the law. I don't even think she likes smoking. I only ever see her do it with Jimmy, it's just..."

"It's just. How they display their closeness," Richard croaks out, his throat still scratchy from sleep.

Angela looks down at Richard in surprise. "Yes, that's it."

"Do you think. They have. Feelings," Richard tries to ask the question he's wondered since that first day he met Clara in Chicago.

"No," Angela shakes her head. "I think they both had complicated childhoods, and their relationship with each other was the only untarnished human connection they had. In their minds, they are siblings, and almost like...shipwreck survivors."

Neither Jimmy nor Clara noticed they had attracted an audience as they continued their fight on the balcony.

"But you were an angel, right? There weren't any women in Chicago, or France, or hell, Atlantic City?" Clara retorted.

Jimmy glared at her. "You know that's different."

"It's always different when a man does it."

That's when he tells her about Pearl. When he's done, when he's staring out at the skyline, and she's rubbing his shoulder like she would when they were little, and he would cry, Clara wonders if they all, still in their early twenties, barely older than the century itself, have already baked so many mistakes into their lives that there is no making it better.

* * *

Angela and Clara take over the master bedroom again.

"I forgot how awful corsets are," Angela said as the bones of the blasted thing cut into her side while Clara finished tightening the one needed for her wedding dress around her waist.

"I must admit that I don't miss them. There," Clara said. They finished the arduous process of applying Angela's wedding finery. The finishing touch was tying the Brain Binder headpiece into place.

"You are absolutely beautiful," Clara said and meant it. "You and Jimmy are going to be very happy," Clara said and wished it.

When Clara left the room, she saw Richard focused on tying Tommy's tiny bowtie. "You both look very handsome," she told them, smiling from the doorway.

"I'm the ring bearer!" Tommy told her. Clara looked quizzically in Richard's direction.

"I have. The rings. Until we get there."

"Excellent idea. Angela's ready if you'll ask the doorman to hold a car for us?" The only tradition Angela insisted on was Jimmy not seeing her until she came down the aisle, so they'd be traveling to the wedding chapel in two separate cars.

When they arrive at the wedding venue, the flowers are waiting for them in the vestibule. Clara's are modest; Angela's looks like several plants and ribbons gave their lives for her to transport them down the aisle.

"I let Jimmy pick the flowers," Angela said.

"He wanted you to have lovely ones," Clara answered, a little overwhelmed at the bouquet.

Angela ran her fingertips over the blossoms. "He wanted everyone to know that he can buy the most expensive flowers around. It's not quite the same thing."

Clara briefly wondered how many other maids of honor went down the aisle trying not to cry.

When the music started Clara, who had been asked to be in many weddings simply so that the society page write up would read "Clara Thompson, daughter of County Treasurer Enoch Thompson and the late Mabel Thompson, served as a bridesmaid" knew how to walk down the aisle like she was participating in the social event of the season, instead of being part of a wedding consisting of five people. She took the time to study the three men at the top of the aisle as she made her way down. Jimmy looked incredibly serious and somber, which meant he was nervous as hell. Tommy looked like he had been threatened with what would happen if he didn't behave. And Richard...Richard was looking straight at her. Her heart suddenly beat with a little more furor against her rib cage. That was when Tommy started waving wildly at her and ran past to hug his mother.

Once they were all standing on the dais Richard wasn't sure where to look. Looking directly at Jimmy and Angela felt intrusive. Clara smiled at him when she caught his eye. He looked back down. Standing across the aisle from Clara, smiling at him in a pretty peach dress holding flowers, felt cruel. The world was mocking him by letting him get so close to the things he would never have.

* * *

"Do me a favor?" Jimmy asked after the last picture was taken. "Keep Tommy and Clara away from the hotel for a while?"

Richard nodded, and then went to tell Clara they were babysitting. "Mmm. What should. We do with him?"

Clara thought for a moment. "Tommy's going to get grouchy if we don't feed him. Ever been to the Automat?"

The large marble building with the huge letters stood out even among the visual noise of Times Square. Tommy openly gawked at the marble edifice, the dolphins that served as coffee faucets, and the other marvels of the restaurant, but Richard privately thought the restaurant looked like something out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel set on Mars. Richard exchanged dollar bills for nickels while Clara toured Tommy around. The child was fascinated by the idea that he could choose anything he wanted behind the glass doors. Richard had to pick him up several times so he could pick the exact ham sandwich, piece of egg custard pie, and a glass of milk he wanted and feed the nickels in himself to open the windows and retrieve the dishes. Then Tommy insisted on feeding the coins into the slots to retrieve Clara's and finally Richard's choices.

Clara, seeing Richard picked meatloaf and mashed potatoes, chose a table in the far corner of the restaurant, before settling Tommy in a chair facing out into the Automat and herself next to him, leaving Richard .the chair facing into the corner.

"I need to eat," Richard said haltingly.

"I as well, or I'll be as grouchy as Tommy," Clara said as she cut up Tommy's sandwich into quarters.

"You don't have. To sit. With me," he said, as he picked up his plate from their tray.

"Richard, where else are we going to sit? It's fine. Please eat," Clara said, before opening up her silverware so she could eat her lunch. As much as she wanted to, she didn't let herself lookup.

Eating in the mask was awful. He usually skipped eating if he couldn't be alone and take his mask off, but sharing a hotel suite with four other people made this difficult, so he was going to have to try. Each bite tasted of tin, and it was a struggle to keep the food from getting caught on the side of the mask, and he feared that food would slide out the edge of the mask without him noticing. Eating in a restaurant full of people and in front of Clara and Tommy was torture. He cut the meatloaf into the smallest bites possible that he could try and swallow without making to much of a scene. Tommy was busy with his lunch and repeated debates with Clara about when he could start eating his pie, and Clara pretended to be fascinated by her clam chowder. She bartered with whatever entity might be out there that Tommy wouldn't ask any questions about Richard eating. From the corner of her eye, she could see he struggled to swallow. She stared harder at her clam chowder, worried that her face would betray the pity she felt. Pity she swore she would never let him see.

Tommy used the moment where both adults were distracted to grab for his pie, sending the rest of his milk across the table and onto the skirt of Clara's new dress. Clara grabbed her napkin and Tommy's, but the milk was still everywhere and spreading fast. Richard stood quickly to avoid Clara's fate.

"I'll. Get more napkins."

The lady overseeing the condiment table looked for clean napkins. When he looked back at the table, he saw Clara holding both of Tommy's hands by the wrists in an attempt, he supposed, to save her dress from having pie stains added to the milk stains. The woman saw him look over, and said: "you have a lovely family." Clara saw him then and made a face as she tried to corral Tommy, and he thought it was somehow better and worse to long for something when you knew what it would feel like to have it.

* * *

Once more, everyone piled into their finery. Except this time, it was their very best. Jimmy had planned this night since the first week in December. For Christmas, he had asked Clara to take Angela to La Belle Femme to get her a real evening gown. He had bought dinner suits for him and Richard.

"I'm telling you, we're going to get a lot of wear out of these," Jimmy told Richard. Richard wondered when. On bootlegging runs? When there was a job to be done?

They all crowded into the taxi (except for Tommy, who was tucked in at the hotel with a sitter), with Richard in the front, which pulled through Central Park in front of Beaux-Arts style building with a brightly lit semi-circle addition whose light beckoned into the darkness of the park. Well dressed people milled around the outside of the building.

"It's called the Casino, and it's the best place in New York. The party tonight is going to be swell," Jimmy told them.

Clara thought this must be how her father had been in his early twenties. Nucky loved the good life and everything that went with it. It's why she grew up on the eighth floor of the Ritz, its why his yearly Nucky's Nocturne party for the state government ensured that the Ritz 's catering department turned a profit each year, it's why she had stood impatiently while her father browbeat the Chicago hotel into giving them the best suite instead of the second-best suite.

When the car stopped, a handsome man with large dark eyes opened the door and helped Clara out of the car. "Miss Thompson, how ya' doin?"

Clara tilted her head and thought about it for a moment. "Ah, Mr. Luciano."

Richard didn't like how Luciano was looking at Clara, who looked the like the Fancy Social Clara he found difficult to reconcile with everyday Clara. She was wearing a blue dress that came down to her ankles and was heavily decorated with gold from the shoulders down past her knees. The material was thin, and the light played on the thin material in such a way that you weren't sure when you were looking at fabric versus her skin. She had topped it with some sort of gold headband and matching earrings.

"Mr. Lansky," Clara recalled as the shorter man approached her. He had understood her Frankenstein reference when that odious little man from Chicago Jimmy was so fond of thought to torment Richard.

"Miss Thompson."

"Call her Clara," Jimmy said as he came around the car. "And this is my wife, Angela. You know my associate, Richard Harrow."

Clara tried to catch Richard's eye. As far as Clara knew, Jimmy despised Luciano and hadn't wanted peace with Rothstein. So why were Luciano and Lansky joining them on Jimmy and Angela's wedding night? Richard wouldn't look at her when she tried to catch his eye.

"So, Meyer and..." Clara said conversationally, falling back to the lively party manners her father had drilled into her at an early age.

"You can call me Charlie," Luciano answered. Clara smiled and nodded, and moved forward toward Richard.

"Penso che la principessa stia fottendo il mostro. Le deve piacere il suo equipaggiamento, perché sicuramente non lo farà per il suo viso," Charlie said to Meyer as they started to walk into the Casino.

Angela gasped. Clara turned back to face them. Her entire body turned hot, and she could feel her heart start to race. She had only been vaguely listening at first, but she had started listening in time to understand the gist-Luciano was insinuating that she was intimate with Richard because of his equipment, not his face. Except in far harsher terms.

Meyer closed his eyes and ever so slightly shook his head sadly. Not smart, Charlie, he thought. Just because Darmody and Harrow didn't speak Italian didn't mean the women didn't. The wife even looked Italian.

"Mi piace la sua faccia meglio della tua personalità. Forse potresti provare ad aggrapparti al tuo cazzo," Clara retorted, her eyes bright with fury. Wonderful, Meyer thought. What was going to make this situation better was Nucky Thompson's daughter insulting Charlie's personality and telling him to cling to his own cock.

"And how is it you speak Italian so well, Clara?" Meyer asked, hoping to diffuse the situation.

"I went to a Catholic school in New Jersey. Since I could read and write Italian when I was hired by the War Department they made me a translator."

"Fottuta ragazza viziata,"Charlie muttered.

"Povero ragazzino che cerca di essere un vero uomo," Clara snapped back.

"Clara," Jimmy said, having no idea what Sal or Lucky or whatever the fuck his name is and Clara could be fighting about, but seeing they were making excellent progress in becoming mortal enemies in the space of minutes.

Angela whispered in Jimmy's ear, "He just called her a spoiled little girl, and she just said he's a little boy pretending to be a real man."

"Fucking fantastic." Clara, who faked perfect politeness to everyone, chose Sal-Lucky-Charlie fucking Luciano to offload on. It was exactly the complication he needed.

"Ero abbastanza uomo per Gillian Darmody," Lucky retorted. Angela gasped again. Gillian was sleeping with this man?

"Cazzo Gillian non ti rende un uomo," Clara said heatedly. Angela filed away the idea that Clara didn't believe sleeping with Gillian automatically meant someone was a man to think about later.

Charlie took a step towards Clara, causing Richard to swiftly push between them. Meyer interceded between Charlie and Richard. Clara turned toward Richard, his reaction to Darcy insulting her flashing through her mind, and grabbed his wrists.

"Charlie is very sorry, yes? Yes?" Meyer all but shouts in his friend's face.

"I took it way to far," Clara says, looking directly into Richard's gaze. "My temper got the better of me. Please." She lowers her voice. "It's not worth it, Richard. Please." Her hands are in his, and he nods finally.

"Is it odd for you to not be the one starting a random fight?" Angela asked her husband. She would have never guessed that it would be Clara who lit the match. Jimmy looked at her but didn't answer.

"Fine. I'm very sorry," Charlie says.

Clara lets go of Richard's left hand and spins around to offer Charlie her right hand. "And I as well. Friends?"

"Amici," he says in response, shaking her hand. "And what we said in Italian?"

"Stays between us." Clara confirms. Charlie nods. Good. Life was complicated enough without worrying that Metal Face was going to come after him.

Clara and Richard walk slightly ahead. "Jesus, Darmody. The broads in your life. They look like angels and swear like sailors." Charlie remembers Angela. "Except for you, ma'am. You look like an angel who doesn't regularly tell people to go fuck themselves." Angela nods, and wonders why the hell she's spending her wedding night with these people.

At the table, absolutely everyone was in need of a drink. The waiter dropped off champagne but got away before Richard could ask for a straw. Clara reached into her gold mesh bag and pulled out paper straws wrapped in a napkin and slipped one into Richard's drink. "I stole them from the Automat," she whispered.

"Thank you," he says, strangely touched that she not only stole straws but thought to put them in her small evening bag.

"There's a price. You have to dance with me," she whispered. "Otherwise I'm going to have to dance with someone else," she tilts her head and raises her eyebrows towards Charlie, "and I'd rather dance with you."

Richard cleared his throat. His hands grasped and ungrasped in his lap. He tried to only think of Clara as his friend, but the last day it had been difficult to not feel something else. It was hard to balance Clara looking at him like she did now with the revulsion on her face the morning he scared Emily Schroeder.

He stood up and reached his hand out. "Would you like to dance?" She smiled up at him. Once on the dance floor, he hesitated at first. Her gown dipped low in the back, and he had to put his hand on her bare back. Clara's skin was soft and warm under his hand. He spun them into the crowd.

Clara looked up at him, flushed and a little breathless, and absolutely aware of every inch of her back where his hand was touching her. "You never said you could dance."

"You never asked. You. Mm. Are a better dancer than ice skater," he said.

Clara laughed. "Fair. You know, you look very handsome in the dinner jacket." They danced past a mirrored column, where the unmasked side of his face was reflected along with her profile. "See? We are the best looking couple on the dance floor."

"Hmm. Except from the other. Side..."

Clara cuts him off. "Where we are the most interesting looking couple in the room."

"So what the fuck is up with those two?" Charlie asks.

Jimmy stares at the dance floor. They looked good together. "They are friends," he says. He thinks to himself that Richard's biggest fear is that he isn't human anymore, and Clara's biggest fear is that she is human.

Angela thought to herself that Richard doesn't think anyone will ever love him, and Clara thinks everyone she loves will leave her, and so they are going to trip all over each other trying to work out the idea they care for each other.

As the song enters the last stanza, Clara feels Richard lift their arms and start to twirl her, before he dips her during the final notes. She can actually feel her eyelashes flutter. Angela will later tell her she thought Clara was going to swoon right there on the dance floor. As they leave the dance floor, he doesn't drop her hand.

"Is it smart to let Nucky Thompson's daughter know we are spending New Years' Eve together?" Meyer asks.

"She's my sister. She'd never betray me."

Meyer thinks Clara's real loyalty may no longer lie with Darmody. He sighs, suddenly saddened he won't be able to share the night's events with Rothstein.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: All of these places-the speakeasy in Central Park and the Automat actually existed!


	9. Peace and Prosperity-Jan 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nucky Thompson wants to throw a ball to celebrate the beginning of a new period of prosperity for Atlantic City and his businesses. Of course, Nucky won't be the one doing the work. Clara gets a chance to show off her own political plotting abilities, and Gillian helps Clara with a personal issue.

**January 1921**

“Hello, Margaret,” Clara said as she entered the hallway outside her father’s office. It was January second, and Clara was still tired from the trip to New York. She was also treading lightly around her father, whom she had broken the news to about Jimmy’s marriage the night before. He wasn’t thrilled that Jimmy married Angela without talking it over with him first. Anxiety hummed along with her pulse as she hoped they weren't in for a rehashing of why Jimmy married Angela, why no one told Nucky, and whatever else her father might throw at her.

Clara badly wanted to tell her father he had to pick a path-either Jimmy was his son, or he wasn’t. Because right now the damage of this wishy-washy nonsense was adding up fast, and Clara’s stomach had grown an acidic knot that never went away. Whatever the Commodore was using Jimmy and Eli for, Clara could feel the trouble mounting. She'd worried what Jimmy's sudden friendship with Rothstein's lieutenants Lansky and Luciano meant. Considering Luciano was sleeping with Gillian and Jimmy's rage about it, she was even more confused and worried. Sure, her father had arranged for the Commodore's downfall the year she spent at boarding school. The Commodore had only gotten out of prison during the war.But that was before. Before Prohibition, before people like Luciano and Capone and Torrio and Rothstein were in their lives. Before bullets went flying past her head. 

“Hello, dear. Do you know why we have been asked?” Margaret asked from the chair where she waited.

“No. I wish I did."

Eddie brought the women into the office and then sat down himself before Nucky began speaking.

“I’m sure you are wondering why I’ve summoned you here. I want to throw a party. A large one, the last weekend of January. 1920 was a transformative year, and I’d like to memorialize it and welcome in a new year of peace and prosperity. Clara, you and Eddie have done this before and can show Margaret the ropes. I want a small dinner party here in the suite, and then a ball at Babette’s with entertainment, dancing, a supper, and maybe a breakfast.”

“Of course,” Clara replied with a practiced smile. Enoch Thompson’s parties were legendary, but behind the ease of perfection lay endless days of work. Days Clara would prefer to spend writing or otherwise engaged. Clara groaned internally at the thought of the million small details which would consume her coming hours. “Well, we are going to have to quickly formalize the guest list so we can start issuing the invitations and personalizing the VIPs.”

“I want to invite everyone. The state government, the federal government, local government, society people, Chicago, and the New York contingent. Let’s invite the Yacht Club circle as well.”

“Wives, or?” Clara asked.

“You and Margaret, so wives. Invite Jimmy, and whomever else you think from Atlantic City.”

Yes, I think I will, Clara decided.

“Please spare no expense on clothing, you two. I want you two to be the best-dressed women on the planet that night.”

After they were dismissed Clara led Margaret into a small file room. “This is where we keep the invitation lists.” Clara started pulling file folders. “Fun people are socialites, athletes, artists, or entertainers Father has met and liked or would like to know. The other lists are pretty self-explanatory. The pencil marks are by order of importance. Eddie usually updates those, but if you have information, flag it. There’s no limit, really, on how many we invite to the party. I’m thinking no more than twenty-four, though, for the dinner in the suite.”

Clara stopped and calculated. Margaret and Father, the Rothsteins (whom the party was being held to impress, she assumed), Angela and Jimmy, Richard, herself. That’s eight. Probably a good idea to invite the Commodore and Gillian as a show of unity. Ten. She should invite Uncle Eli and Aunt June, but they were rather heavy furniture at dinner parties, and she’d have enough to do to keep the dinner moving without them. They could come to the party only. She’d invite Lansky and Luciano, though, and if they came without dates that pushed her to twelve. Her father would see it as an olive branch extended toward Rothstein, but Clara wanted to watch them with Jimmy, to see if she couldn't suss out what was going on under the surface. Eddie Cantor and a songstress date would get them to fourteen but provide some brightness and life to the dinner. Everyone liked dining with celebrities.

“We need to pick five political couples. I’m thinking Mayor and Mrs. Bader, the governor and his wife, and some judges and spouses, but I’ll confirm with Father. Then we’ll need to work with the Ritz for catering the dinner.” Clara thought for a moment. “Father is going to want to impress, so I think we’ll start with lobster canapes, then have cream of something soup, poached salmon in aspic, timbale de foie gras with roasted apple, lamb chops with potato croquettes and asparagus, if we can get any, and then just a watercress salad with cheese crackers. For dessert, simply cake and ice cream I think. Do you think that will suffice?”

Margaret nodded. “I never knew planning these events was so involved.”

Clara grinned. “Neither does Father. Now, let us talk about the menus for supper and breakfast, the dressing rooms here and at Babette’s, who will work the doors, and the entertainment. I think we should try for Eddie Cantor as the master of ceremonies, two orchestras for dancing, and a few singers. For decorations? Maybe a winter garden theme? Let’s turn Babette’s into some sort of tropical floral fantasy. That should be expensive enough to make Father happy.”

Nucky made a point of being in the suite for dinner, so Clara could let him know how preparations were coming. He was thrilled with the Winter Garden idea, and specified the supper should be continuous from one to four, which would be far more expensive and more complicated for Babette’s staff, but was considered the fanciest ball supper option. Bullion, Lobster a la Newburg, chicken croquettes and peas, green salad, and more ice cream and cake made up the supper menu. And champagne. So much champagne. Breakfast would consist of more champagne and begin service at five, but simply feature scrambled eggs with bacon and rolls.

“Eddie can see to all the alcohol we need. I want our guests to get anything they want,” Nucky said when she finished laying out the initial plans.

“So for the dinner,” Clara said. “We have ten open invitations for dinner. I’m assuming the governor, Bader, and whom else from the government?”

“Fourteen are already accounted for?” Nucky asked.

Clara recounted the guest list.

“Why the hell are you wasting a dinner invitation on Harrow? If you wish to include him, a party invitation is more than sufficient," Nucky snapped.

Clara met her father’s eyes levelly. “Well, I thought this dinner, and this party, was to show how well you run Atlantic City and celebrating the return to normalcy. The papers are still full of stories of how veterans struggle, veterans with far less,” Clara took a breath so that her actual emotions weren’t evident in her voice, “serious injuries than Richard’s. But in Atlantic City that doesn’t happen. In Atlantic City, Nucky Thompson employs such a veteran, the man becomes part of his daughter’s and surrogate son’s (because that is how almost everyone still views Jimmy, Father, no matter what nonsense is going on) inner circle, and he is literally honored with a seat at the table. Because that’s the sort of peace and prosperity you bring to your city.”

Nucky stared at his daughter for a moment. “Well, isn’t it fortunate for me that you inherited your mother’s face and my political instincts. That’s a brilliant bit of stagecraft that never occurred to me.”

He had a bad habit, he knew, of viewing her as a twelve-year-old girl, and not a woman who would turn twenty-three this year. It also occurred to him that Clara was quickly becoming a woman good at getting what she wanted. He had stopped her from joining the women’s communication wing of the Army in France during the war, but only by calling in multiple favors. She had still left college, taken a pregnant Angela Darmody, and settled in New York to work for the War Department, eventually making her way to Europe and then D.C. When she returned, he assumed she’d make the marriage he asked of her, and settle down as a society wife. He assumed she would move away from her childish insistence that Jimmy was her brother. Instead, she’d developed a career, and still clung to James. Hell, she treated James's son as her nephew. He'd seen them on the Boardwalk, he'd even seen Harrow accompanying them. She’d adopted Harrow as the mascot of their little group. It was all still childish foolishness, he knew, and Clara’s inherent good sense would lead her to soon settle down with a rich man who can keep her in the comfort she was raised in. Until then, he thought, her political instincts should be cultivated and he should keep an eye out for a husband who will enjoy a wife capable of political plotting.

* * *

Madame Jeunet had outdone herself, Clara thought as she looked at her reflection in the store mirror. Her father had bought her plenty of beautiful dresses before, but the heavily beaded blue-green dress was the most beautiful thing she’d ever owned. With each step or movement, it subtly changed colors, ranging from a light blue to deep green depending on how the light caught the bugle beads. Even better from her father’s perspective, it looked and was extremely expensive. It’s the dress only the daughter of a very wealthy man would wear. She didn't even want to think of what cleaning it and storing it will entail. It’s the beadwork, Clara knew, that makes it so expensive, and unfortunately so heavy. Her shoulders would pay in pain for the loveliness of the light reflecting dress.

“Si beau si frais,” Madame Jeunet murmured as she supervised the pinning and Clara struggled to stay completely still. “You will need special undergarments. Your everyday underpinnings, so sweet, they do not work with such a beautiful gown.”

Madame Jeunet had supplied the wardrobe Clara required for appearances as Enoch Thompson’s daughter since the store opened not long after they moved into the Ritz. The shop owner was always carefully ingratiating, but also managed to work sly barbs into her endearing patter. Clara looked at the straps of the plain white silk brassiere visible while the alterations lady kept pinning. “Whatever you think, Madame,” Clara answered in reply and the seamstress began working on a special brassiere that would work with the neckline of the dress.

Later, Clara undressed in front of the mirror in her room and considered her incredibly plain underthings. Modern, yes, Clara had abandoned corsets and layers of underthings when she went to work during the war. But other than, she thought, not so different from the plain white underthings she wore as a schoolgirl. Madame Jeunet carried lovely things, but Clara had always eschewed them thanks to Lucy buying one of every item in the store and then wearing them around the suite (although Lucy wearing them was better than when Lucy chose not to wear them). The only lingerie Clara bought from La Belle Femme were pajamas, which she loved and which felt sure none of her father’s mistresses were using as a tool of seduction, or specially designed things meant to be worn with certain dresses. As Clara tried to picture the things she’d like to buy, she realized it felt wrong to use her father’s money to buy things she was buying because she wanted to look seductive. She watched as well as felt her cheeks flame red as she thought about why, exactly, she felt the need to upgrade her lingerie drawer.

The next day she walked down to the corner of Atlantic and South Carolina streets, where Atlantic City’s only major department store, M.E. Blatts, was located. Since she was buying with her own money, she couldn’t afford La Belle Femme. Clara waived off the saleslady, a pretty redhead about her age, and wandered the lingerie department trying to decide what she wanted. She picked up a black merry widow but thought she’d feel like an actress playing a part trying to wear it. A white brassiere and tap pants she considered looked like everything else she already owned. A red lacy step in looked disconcertingly like something Lucy would wear.

“Well, hello, dear. What a pleasant surprise!” A bright, modulated voice said from behind her. “I would have thought these were the kinds of things you purchased at La Belle Femme.”

Clara turned and smiled, and performed air cheek kisses with Gillian. “Lucy rather ruined the idea of buying lingerie at La Belle Femme.”

“Ah, yes. I could see how that could be so.”

“Also, I think I’m too old for my father to cover my lingerie bill?”

Gillian tilted her head and looked closely at Clara. “You were always such a funny little thing. Is it because you don’t want Nucky paying for lingerie you are buying for another man's titillation?”

The heat rose so quickly in Clara’s face that it felt like the onset of a fever. Her hand smoothed the skirt of her gray wool dress.

“No need to blush, dear. You are certainly a grown woman. All women have desires.”

Clara looked around, hoping a gas leak or other disaster would destroy the store and save her from this moment.

Gillian looked at the red step-in Clara was holding and continued, “This, however, is tawdry and doesn’t look like you. Unless the gentleman likes tawdry? In which case, I think black stockings.”

Clara suddenly pictures Richard’s impeccably neat tie and the way his shoes also look like he just had them polished. “No, he doesn’t like tawdry. I mean...”

“Yes, I think I see what you mean,” Gillian’s eyes are dancing and Clara knew in her bones this will come back to haunt her. “Tell me what you want.”

Clara calmed herself with a deep breath. “All of my things look like they belong on a Catholic schoolgirl.”

“Some men like that, dear.”

“Not any man I’d be interested in,” Clara said in an even voice.

Gillian nodded and turned her attention to the racks. Soon, Clara, piles of lingerie, and Gillian were sequestered in a changing room. Gillian quickly pulled items on and off Clara, clucking as she went. Clara doesn’t particularly like being touched, or people being in the room while she changed, but a childhood of being around Gillian has made her accept that Gillian was going to do as she sees fit, and that included adjusting Clara’s bosoms or correcting loose straps as Clara tried on different bits of lingerie. It also meant she watches as Clara changes.

“You remember, I brought you here to buy your first grown-up underthings,” Gillian said, holding up a delicate light blue step-in.

“I remember. You taught me how to roll my stockings on. I never tear mine taking them on or off because of that.”

“I’ve always admired how committed you’ve remained to your friendship with James,” Gillian said, and nodded that the delicate blue step in Clara was wearing was a must buy. “But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

Clara made eye contact with her in the mirror as she changed into a brassiere she couldn’t quite figure out. “None of this, none, is for Jimmy. I’m so happy he and Angela are married.”

Gillian moved behind her to tie the laces of the complicated brassiere and smiled at Clara in the mirror. “Well, whomever this is for, you look like a present waiting to be unwrapped. I should have thought to take you again to show you how to buy more sophisticated things, but, well, the war...”

Clara nodded. The war, and the occasional letters only Clara received. The idea that Jimmy wrote someone but it wasn’t Gillian. The idea that he saw someone but it wasn't Gillian. Gillian’s anger had been white-hot, and Clara knew it because when she would see Gillian she was more polite than ever.

* * *

Unlike Jimmy and Angela, whose move was apparently going to take weeks and require lots of effort from everyone, Richard moved into his new place in one quick car trip. He still wasn’t sure how he ended up with it. The grandmother of a friend of Clara and Jimmy’s from school had a tiny, one-room cottage behind her house which she wished to rent out, but only to someone she knew. Clara Thompson and Jimmy Darmody vouching for him apparently meant he counted, and he was freed of the awkward encounters that came with living in a boarding house. When arrived home, there was mail in his door. The envelope was thick, and he recognized the careful script on the envelope. There were two cards inside.

_Mr. Enoch Thompson_

_At Home_

_On Saturday, the twenty-ninth of January_

_at ten o'clock_

_Babette's Supper Club, Atlantic City_

_Dancing Entertainment_

_The favour of an answer is requested_

_The Ritz-Carlton, Atlantic City_

Some sort of party, he assumed. The next card was handwritten and read:

_Mr. Enoch Thompson_

_requests the pleasure of_

_Mr. Richard Harrow's_

_company at dinner_

_on the twenty-ninth of January_

_at eight o'clock_

_The Ritz-Carlton_

On the back of the dinner invitation, it was written:

_"Dear Richard,_

_Please come! Who else will dance with me without stepping on my feet, or keep me from fighting with Charlie Luciano over the soup course? Jimmy and Angela will be there, so we shall manage to have fun. I can't get you away from the table for dinner, but I have a plan for supper and breakfast._

_Affectionately,_

_Clara "_

He ran a fingertip over her handwriting. He wished he knew why Clara was so nice to him. Was it pity? The only time he thought he saw pity on her face was while he was trying to eat at the Automat, and even then she'd mostly just acted like nothing was wrong.

But he could still clearly see the revulsion on her face the morning he terrified Emily Schroeder. Her friendship might be real, but that look reminds him, as if the vast differences in their lives didn't, that all they would ever be is friends. He'd have to go to the library first thing in the morning. He didn't know what "at home" meant, and he had no idea how to write his response to Clara's invitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of the ball, dinner, and invite details came from the 1920 edition of Emily Post's Etiquette book. It was fun to see Clara be good at the rich girl stuff her father expects of her, and to show she's learned how to plot and use those skills to get what she wants (a dinner invitation for Richard). This chapter also gave me a moment to start fleshing out the Gillian/Clara relationship.


	10. Let's Try Not to Brawl-January 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night of Nucky's dinner party and ball is here! The Rothsteins have traveled with Lansky and Luciano from New York, the Commodore and Gillian have left Dracula's castle, and Tommy is tucked away with a maid in Clara's room. Clara's carefully planned facade can't cover over the cracks in relationships as the conspiracy against Nucky builds. Takes place before the first episode of season two.

**January 29th, 1921**

Every cell in Richard's body was telling him to turn around and walk away. He did not belong in the lobby of the Ritz; he did not belong in this dinner jacket; he should leave.

The day after Richard's invitation came, Jimmy explained that "at home" meant a ball, and that the last ball Jimmy attended ended with him crawling into Clara's room and falling asleep on the foot of her bed at seven in the morning. None of this made Richard less anxious, but what kept him moving toward the elevator was the handwritten "please come" on the back of the dinner invitation.

At first, he was alone in the elevator, but on the fifth floor, four people joined him. He recognized the three men.

"Mr. Harrow, isn't it?" Rothstein asked. "I wondered if you'd be joining us. How is the lovely Miss Thompson?"

Charlie and Meyer made eye contact. Richard cleared his throat twice before he managed to answer. "She is fine."

"Yes, I'm sure she is. My dear, may I present Mr. Harrow? He works for Mr. Thompson."

"How do you do?" Carolyn responded while fighting the urge to look at her husband. Richard bowed slightly.

"Harrow," Luciano said from his corner.

"Hmm. Luciano. Lansky."

"Isn't this a nice occasion?" Lansky replied. "Wasn't it kind of Miss Thompson to invite us all, and won't we all have a good time?" Lansky's dearest hope at that moment was that Charlie and Clara would manage to not cause a brawl at any point during the long night ahead and that Harrow wouldn't feel the need to defend her honor.

Considering how Charlie and Harrow were eyeing each other, Meyer wasn't placing any bets.

The elevator opened to Nucky's private hallway, where Clara stood in the doorway to the suite. Richard had to clear his throat three times out of nervousness. He'd seen her dressed up before, but nothing like this. As she greeted an older couple and moved slightly, the dress seemed to change color from light blue to green. She was wearing the gold headband and earrings from New Year's Eve and had a smile he now knew wasn't her real one.

"Miss Thompson, my wife, Carolyn," Rothstein said in his smoothest voice as he took her hand.

Carolyn Rothstein was not what Clara was expecting. Mr.Rothstein always made her feel like a bug under a microscope and somewhat reminded her of an undertaker. She expected Mrs. Rothstein to smell like Lysol and wear her hair pulled tightly back. Mrs. Rothstein was actually warm, charming with large green eyes and dark red hair, and was wearing a sophisticated, modern deep blue velvet gown. "Thank you so much for venturing out to Atlantic City. My father is just inside the door; I know he's looking forward to meeting you."

The Rothsteins walked towards the suite, leaving Charlie and Meyer standing in front of her. "Mr. Lansky, Mr. Luciano, please call me Clara," she said in a slightly louder than usual voice as she offered Lansky her hand.

Lansky smiled. Excellent cover for the fact they've met before, he thought as he awkwardly kissed her hand, and then realized he'd done the wrong thing.

"Ti prendi mezza faccia con te ovunque tu vada?" Charlie asked her with a smirk that made Clara have to fight to maintain her social smile as she seethed at his intimation that she treated Richard like a pet.

"Charlie," Lansky said in a warning voice.

"Gillian Darmody è qui. Prova a tenere i pantaloni addosso per tutti i nostri interessi?" Clara snapped back.

"Well, it's always pleasant when we get together," Meyer says, pushing on Charlie's back. "Although, Clara does have a point," he hissed into Charlie's ear; this nightmare evening would only be made worse if Charlie couldn't keep his pants on around Darmody's mother.

Richard moved in front of her, and she took his hand so that from the door, it looked like she was actually performing her social role. "Well, I'm off to a swimming start with my hostessing duties," she said with a rueful smile.

"I thought. You handled that. Well." The cheek twitch gave it away and made Clara laugh.

"Oh, so now you are going to tease me. I'm so glad you're here that it doesn't matter." The elevator door opened with another batch of guests. Clara leaned forward. "Do me a favor? Angela is already inside and doesn't have anyone to talk to."

Richard nodded and carefully let go of her hand. Mr. Thompson nodded to him but kept speaking to the Rothsteins. As he moved toward Angela, Eddie appeared at his side, handing him a bourbon with a straw.

Angela laughed when she saw the puzzled expression on the good side of Richard's face. "It's Clara. If she knows your favorite drink, she tells Eddie beforehand, and he makes it magically appear when you walk in." She lifts her glass of red wine, and motions over to Rothstein, who is being handed a china teacup. "I'm assuming that man doesn't drink alcohol."

Richard surveilled the room. Jimmy's mother, who still looked shockingly young to him, and his father, who looked shockingly old (suddenly he could hear his own father admitting he was born in 1862, and his father's shame that he was so old to marry and start a family. His father had been thirty-five when he and Emma were born. Jimmy's father had to be in his seventies, so he had already been in his fifties when Jimmy was born.

Suddenly, the math on Jimmy's parents' ages made him uncomfortable, and a few things Clara had said in passing suddenly made a horrifying kind of sense) stood together talking to Mayor Bader and a woman Richard assumed was Mrs. Bader. The last time he saw the new mayor, Bader was spanking a young woman in this very room. The morals of the people who now made up his life were a mystery to him.

The room grew full. Clara came in from the hallway, and Jimmy beckoned her over where he was speaking with an older man with muttonchop sideburns. They were too far away for Richard to hear them, but what he noticed most was how different they were. Over the last months, he had become slightly accustomed to Clara's society persona, and how that version of her differed from the person he knew. He was less accustomed to Jimmy's social persona. They both looked like characters out of the book Clara loaned him at Thanksgiving, _This Side of Paradise._ When she gave it to him, she had told him he would like it because it was all about how people fail to make connections. He couldn't remember ever saying anything like that to her, so Jimmy must have repeated what he told him back in Chicago. He realized he had no idea what Jimmy and Clara talked about when they were alone, and felt a little disconcerted that they must speak of him, at least sometimes.

"I forget," Angela says softly. "And then suddenly they are Prince James and Princess Clara of the Boardwalk, and I wonder how Jimmy and I ever ended up together. I mean, look at them. They don't look like the man who eats breakfast in his undershirt or the girl who can spend hours playing on the floor with Tommy."

Richard was silent. He knew precisely what Angela meant. He didn't understand why they are his friends, or what he had in common with them. They actually looked golden in the carefully dim lights of the drawing-room.

"Mmm. Jimmy loves you," he said simply.

"He might," Angela answered. "But he also loves this, and I don't know where I fit into this. Look at this party, Richard. Did you see the invitations? I wouldn't know how to do any of this. Clara, who does know how to do it, doesn't love it in the same way Jimmy does. For her, it's something she has to do. An obligation of being Nucky's daughter. She'd rather be at her typewriter or eating chop suey at Canton's Tea Room. This is what Jimmy sees as his birthright. It's what he wants."

Jimmy motioned for Angela, and Clara made her way to Richard as a ruckus emerged from the hallway to Clara's room. The sound of small feet echoed through the room before Tommy threw himself at Richard's leg at full force, holding a piece of paper in his hands.

"Richard! Clara! I drew a picture!"

Clara looked for the missing maid who was supposed to be sitting with Tommy in Clara's room. At the same time, Richard carefully kneeled to Tommy's level and steadied the boy's hands with his own while he studied the picture, which to Clara looked like a monster surrounded by scribbles.

"Ah. A whale. In the bathtub. Very nice." Richard said very seriously. Clara could feel her face soften as her heart turned over in her chest, looking at Richard's large hands around Tommy's tiny ones. Without thinking, she placed her hand on Richard's shoulder and smiled down at Tommy herself. The Rothsteins, standing across from the tableau, caught each other's eyes.

"I wouldn't have seen it, but very nice. I like the yellow bathtub," Clara told Tommy.

"You promised we would go to the Wheel," Tommy reminded them.

"Tommy, wouldn't you like Mema and the Commodore to take you to the Ferris Wheel?" Gillian hurried across the drawing-room to put herself next to Tommy. Richard stood up to get out of her way, but Tommy held onto his pant leg.

"No. Richard and Clara promised. At our trip," Tommy said stubbornly.

"And so we will go," Clara said lightly, "as soon as the Boardwalk opens."

"Come on, buddy," Jimmy said as he grabbed Tommy around the waist and grimaced at the weight the small boy put on his bad leg. Angela freed herself and joins her family.

"Tommy, you shouldn't have left Clara's room," Angela chided the boy as they walked away.

Margaret announced that dinner was served after they return, and Richard was relieved that he was between Clara and Angela. Clara arranged the seating, he realized. He tried to figure out how to pull out both Angela and Clara's chairs, but the older man with the sideburns he saw speaking with Clara and Jimmy earlier pulled out Angela's for her.

"The good news is that very few people are going to eat their dinner tonight because they'll be too busy talking. The other good news is supper is much better, anyway, and I have a plan for that," Clara said softly as they move their forks around their plates and pretend to eat the lobster canapes.

"Of course, it's all foolishness," the Commodore's voice boomed from Nucky's end of the table. "We should have married them off to each other."

"Unfortunately, Clara and I had no interest in being married off to each other," Jimmy said.

"Clara and Jimmy? That's ridiculous," Gillian inserted.

"That would mean Jimmy wouldn't have Angela or Tommy, and that would be a tragedy. Jimmy and I are best suited as friends," Clara responded casting a worried eye at Angela. She'd go lingerie shopping with Gillian every day for a year if the Commodore would drop dead tomorrow, she thought. What an awful thing to say in front of Angela.

"Louis, have you not met our children? I thought they should stay in college. They are headstrong. They both left college-Jimmy for the war, Clara to work for the War Department. Hell, Clara tried to get an assignment to France. Do you think they were going to marry just because I asked?" Nucky asked.

"Besides, whoever marries Clara is going to have put up with her plans. Angela at least does me the favor of letting me make my own plans."

"Funny, Jimmy," Clara said under her breath.

"Perhaps you should have kept tighter reigns on our colts, Nucky. What better way to consolidate power than marrying my son to your daughter?"

"If you wanted us to grow up and marry, we shouldn't have been raised as siblings," Clara said softly before brightening her voice and continuing loudly, "Has anyone seen _The Green Goddess_ since it opened on Broadway? I saw it in tryouts here, but I read the staging in New York is delightful."

"Yes, Arnold and I just saw it. The Booth is the perfect theater for the sets. You really feel like you are in the Himalayas..." Carolyn Rothstein began, understanding Clara's efforts to salvage dinner.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but let me refute Clara's point," The Commodore interrupted. "It probably was a mistake to leave James to be raised by the Thompsons."

Silence fell over the table. "Well, you know what they say about Nucky," Eddie Cantor interjected, "He hasn't an enemy in the world, but his friends all hate him."

The table laughs and fell back into individual conversations. Clara caught his eye in thanks. This is why you invite entertainers to dinner, Clara thought.

When dinner finally, painfully, wound down, Clara whispered to Richard. "The men are going to go into Father's study to smoke cigars and do...whatever they do, while the ladies have coffee in the drawing-room. I need to get to Babette's in case of early arrivals. Walk me?"

Richard very seriously offered Clara his arm after she put on a blue velvet cape, and they made their way to Babette's.

"The Commodore is just so awful. Can you imagine how Angela must have felt as her father-in-law spewed that nonsense? And he doesn't even mean it. He was just being terrible," Clara said as they walked.

Richard looked down at her. "You don't. Like him."

"I despise him, and I don't trust him." Clara stared straight ahead for a moment. "I'd never try and come between you and Jimmy," mainly, she thought, because I don't think I'd win and I couldn't bear defeat, because then I'd lose you altogether. "But please be careful. It's not that I think my father is perfect, but the Commodore... there's no limit to his depravity. "

They walked into a Babette's transformed. Palm trees were banked in all corners, flowers decorated every available spot, the entire room smelled like oranges, and it looked like the main floor was bathed in moonlight.

"You. Did this?" Richard asks her as they stood, alone, in the middle of the dance floor.

"No. My father's money and the set designer Eddie Cantor recommended did this. I just told them I wanted it to feel like I was walking through a Florida night. Just, you know, without the bothers of bugs or humidity," Clara looked over at Richard, who was looking around the room with an inscrutable expression. "I know you don't like me like this or like this of thing," her voice faltered a touch.

"I always. Like you," Richard said. "I don't. Understand this."

Clara turned to face him. "I grew up in it and don't understand it," she said with a shrug, meaning more than just the decorated ballroom. "But at the moment I'm wearing the prettiest dress I've ever owned, I'm standing here with one of my favorite people who looks quite dashing in his dinner jacket, and it looks and smells like an ideal Florida night. Right now, at this moment, I'm quite happy and content." She reached for his hand.

Richard looked at her and tried, and failed, to speak. The orchestra struck up in practice, and so he did the only thing he could think to do. He put his arms around her, and they began to dance. The look on Clara's face made him feel dizzy.

"It's not like Clara not to be standing here ready to receive," June said to Eli when they walk into the foyer of Babette's. "It's ten o'clock."

"Hello, Sheriff Thompson, Mrs. Thompson," Babette said when she saw them. "Clara is in the ballroom with her friend. She's checking on the decorations." Babette was one of many people that night who will not say what she thought, which is that Clara Thompson, whom Babette had always considered a chilly and efficient little bit of business, was swooning over her masked bodyguard on the dance floor like she just discovered that she was a warm-blooded woman and not a bloodless princess in a tower.

Eli and June walked into the ballroom, but Richard and Clara were far too focused on each other to notice them.

"Oh my goodness," June said, unsure of what else she should say.

Eli watched his niece. He always thought of Clara as being smart but cold. As much as she and Nucky went at each other, he thought it was because they are rather alike at their core. Mabel was the only thing that softened Nucky. His face literally changed when Mabel was around. It was softer, lighter, happier.

It was precisely the way Clara looked as she danced with Harrow, like for the first time the thought had occurred to her that life was more than just a chess game she was determined to win.


	11. Owe You One (Part 1)-January 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ball begins. Eli discovers new information, Richard and Clara make a discovery, and Angela realizes something about her husband.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to write one chapter that took place between seasons one and two. This is the fifth chapter and there's one more to go! However, it's letting me develop something the show lacked-the character caught in the middle when Jimmy and Nucky go to war. It also lets us spend time with characters like Carolyn Rothstein.

**January 29-30, 1921**

The music was lovely, but Clara was barely aware of it. Nor was she aware of the fact that time was passing. At the moment, her awareness centered on the feel of Richard's hand on her back. Every time he readjusted it slightly, it felt like electricity danced across the surface of her skin.

One of the truths that Clara accepted about her life was that she was not a person capable of merely living in the moment. As she stepped into a bath and enjoyed sliding into warm soapy water, her brain was making a to-do list for the day, thinking about the book she was reading, or worrying she had forgotten something. It was the same when she swam in the ocean, or walked down the Boardwalk, or saw a play. No matter what she did, her mind busied itself by wandering down multiple different paths during all her activities, usually finding new things to worry about, or new mistakes to castigate herself over.

It was why at night she tried to read or write until it was impossible to keep her eyes open. Only complete exhaustion allowed her brain to stop listing everything she did wrong, to stop counting every mistake she had ever made, or thinking of all the things she could have done better long enough that she could succumb to sleep.

It was why she loved writing. When she wrote, her mind pushed the various pathways together so that all her thoughts flowed in the same direction, and she could just be in the moment.

The only other time that happened was when she was with Richard. It was as if he so filled her senses that her brain focused on the details of the time together, on the complex jumble of feelings he inspired, and her thinking slowed so that she could just be in the moment. Even if what she usually was in the moment was a shivery mess.

Right now, maybe even more so than usual. It was a rare time since he stopped guarding her when they were just...alone. She wasn't worried about managing Jimmy, or her father, or anyone else. She knew they were all out there, waiting to burst this little bubble that cocooned them from the reality that lay outside of this moment. Still, at this particular moment, the world seemed to be folding in on itself so that it was just his hand on her back, his other hand in hers, the nearness of him as they spun under the carefully constructed fake moonlight. She smelled the scent of his soap, of his aftershave, and behind it all, of his skin. He was looking directly at her-which was unusual enough—and combined with the overwhelming nearness of him caused butterflies to rush up from her stomach to her throat so quickly she felt almost dizzy from the accompanying breathlessness.

Finally, she braved meeting Richard's gaze directly. He looked frightened (a feeling she was highly empathetic with at the moment), but there was something else there. She hoped it was the something else in her own gaze. It felt like he was drawing her slightly closer to him. Clara thought she was close enough that she could almost feel the heat of his body behind his clothes. His eye seemed to be sweeping between her eyes and her mouth, and Clara tilted her head back by instinct. She watched him clear his throat, and his mouth twitched as they stop dancing. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest she was surprised that he, that the orchestra somewhere in their pit, could not hear it. Nervous energy swept through her, and she was trying to still herself enough that she could lean into him.

"Hey, there you are, Dollface," Eli's voice echoed around the empty Babette's.

The breath Clara hadn't realized she was holding came out in a rush, and she lept back, partly out of surprise and partly out of fear that if she didn't, the presence of Eli and June Thompson weren't going to stop her from finishing what she was about to begin.

Clara realized her uncle and aunt were staring at them, and that June looked vaguely scandalized. Damn, she thought, it must already be ten o'clock. Only Uncle Eli would be gauche enough to show up precisely on time. "Richard," she managed to get out, completely aware her voice was uneven, "I have to go greet the guests."

* * *

It was eleven before the party hit its stride. The Rothsteins had secured a small table where they could watch the drama of the ball unfold like a spring flower in the first morning light. From their table, they could see the dancers on the floor, the onlookers in the balcony, and Clara Thompson standing in the foyer greeting a never-ending flow of her father's guests. They could also see the masked man positioned in the ballroom where he could watch the door and see Miss Thompson.

"So, Arnold," Carolyn said in a teasing voice born from the knowledge that comes with almost twelve years of marriage, "I feel like you would enjoy speaking about Miss Thompson and her friend."

Rothstein sipped his tea and smiled at his perceptive wife. "Aren't they an unexpected delight? Tell me what you've noticed."

Carolyn let her gaze drift between the man and the young woman. "Well, he'd rather have been anywhere else than at that terrible dinner or here at this party in a dinner jacket. But he'd go anywhere she was, or she wanted him to go." She saw her husband nod happily (she loved Arnold for many reasons, but she found his busybodiness delightful. In a different time, he would have been an excellent matchmaker instead of whatever...well, she wouldn't think of that now). "And Miss Thompson, she'd rather be anywhere else, as well."

"Really?" Rothstein asked, astonished Carolyn picked up on something he had not. "You think her unhappy?"

Carolyn watched Clara Thompson going through the motions of enthusiastically greeting everyone in front of her while she considered her response. "I think her unsatisfied," Carolyn said slowly. "She's not actually all that interested in any of this."

Arnold leaned forward. "She writes books for young people. She broke off an engagement with the son of some New Jersey political dynasty, much to her father's disgust. She considers Jimmy Darmody her brother. And she seems utterly besotted with her father's hitman, who, best I can tell, is a farm boy from Wisconsin. I don't imagine that's what Thompson has in mind for the girl he raised as a princess."

"I would ask if her father knows about Mr. Harrow, but I think the answer is no. I don't even think Miss Thompson and Mr. Harrow are fully aware of each other's feelings. And when the little Darmody boy came out to show them the picture? She couldn't resist putting her hand on Harrow's shoulder. She was smiling at him like..." Carolyn's voice drifts off, and she alters what she initially meant to say. "She smiled at him like she imagined an entire life with him."

After thinking for a moment, Carolyn added, "Charlie dislikes her."

Rothstein looked sharply at his wife. "How do you know?"

"As we walked away from her at the hotel, she and Charlie were speaking Italian to each other. They were not pleasant tones of voice."

"I was not aware that Mr. Luciano and Miss Thompson were acquainted on a level that allowed them to have an opinion about each other. The last time we were here, even Meyer commented that Miss Thompson didn't even notice Charlie."

Carolyn almost pointed out how Clara had told Meyer and Charlie in an overload voice to call her Clara, almost as if she was covering up a deeper acquaintance than they were admitting to. She held back that piece of information for now. After all, it was Arnold who taught her never to play all her cards at once.

"Let me tell you about the first time I met them..." Arnold began.

Jimmy was attempting to dance with Angela to the best of his ability. The stiffness in his leg felt so foreign as he held her on the dance floor, and he felt a bit of wistfulness for the way they danced before he left to join up.

"That dinner was awful," Angela said softly.

Jimmy tried to think of a joke about Clara's parties before deciding limited honesty was the only way to go. "My father, he was just trying to get under Nucky's skin."

"By pointing out what a disappointment I am? At least that solved the question of what he and Gillian talk about."

Gillian is not a topic Jimmy enjoys talking about with his wife, so he changed the subject. "Why is Richard just standing there?"

Angela smiled. "He's watching Clara. He thinks it's unsafe that she's out there alone."

Jimmy rolled his eyes. "Yes, because Nucky and I and a host of other people aren't right here to watch after her."

"It's sweet. I mean...it's obvious they like each other. It's obvious it goes beyond friendship."

His leg was about to buckle, so he led Angela off the dance floor. The pain was making him snappish and leaving him in dire need of a drink. "Nothing can come of it. But I don't understand why Clara doesn't do something if she has feelings, even if Richard can't."

Oh, Angela thought, it's not just me. Part of her always assumed that Clara and Jimmy's long relationship meant he understood Clara in a way he had never been able to understand her, his wife. But he didn't. He saw Clara as she presented herself to almost everyone, not as she was. "She's terrified, Jimmy. She's bad at relationships. Having your mother kill herself after a string of miscarriages and dead infants and then having your father move you into a hotel where he has a new mistress every year or so might leave a person a little unsure about intimacy."

Jimmy stared at his wife but didn't say anything.

"Here," Richard said, thrusting a cup of punch into Clara's hand after the last guest finally enteredd the ballroom, and her greeting duties were finished.

She drank the cup down thirstily before she spoke. "Thank you. I've talked and smiled so much in the last...what time is it?"

Richard consulted his pocket watch, a small action that always made her smile. "It's. A quarter 'til one."

"Supper starts in fifteen minutes, and the VIP room will open. I should go check on everything." Clara didn't move, though. She tried to think of how to recapture the magic of the dance floor, how to address what went on between them, how to put the tangle of emotions sitting in her chest into words.

Meyer Lansky came in from the ballroom. He looked nervous. "Harrow, Clara, by any chance have you seen Charlie?"

Richard shook his head while Clara answered, "I've not yet left the foyer."

"We are all supposed to meet in the VIP room at one. Not only can I not find Charlie, but I don't see Mrs. Darmody on the ballroom floor either."

Clara closed her eyes. She could sense the upcoming catastrophe like a runaway train bearing down on her. "Meyer, Babette is standing inside the door. Tell her I asked you to check the observation boxes-one is set up for supper, the others should be empty. They would be excellent places for a rendezvous. Richard, come with me to the opposite side and check the dressing rooms and the VIP room?"

"I thought. Mrs. Darmody. Was with Jimmy's father?" Richard asked as they made their way through the dressing rooms.

Clara chose her words carefully. She judged Gillian for a lot, but not for anything to do with the Commodore. If Jimmy wasn't involved, if Richard wasn't involved, if she wasn't worried about the possible damage to herself, to Angela, to Tommy, she would hope that Gillian took the Commodore for every red cent the old bastard possessed and, in doing so, caused him incalculable pain and humiliation. It still probably wouldn't equal one-tenth the pain he had visited upon Gillian. And, she knew, her father was also due a reckoning when it came to Gillian. But the collateral damage of the current plan seemed unbearable.

"I think there are things Gillian gets from the Commodore she can't get from Charlie, and there are things from Charlie she can't get from the Commodore," Clara looked up from the corner of her own eyes to Richard's good side to see if he caught her meaning. His mouth was twitching badly, so she assumed he has.

"But Mrs. Darmody. Is Jimmy's mother. And Luciano is our age."

Clara noticed Richard's hand cupping and uncupping, a gesture she knew meant he was uncomfortable. "Gillian is more of an age to be our sister, not Jimmy's mother. I mean, I wish she'd look for her fun somewhere other than Charlie Luciano and not during my father's party, but..." Clara shrugged.

They heard the noise before they got to the door of the VIP room. Richard knocked on the door, hard, but the room's occupants either did not hear or ignored the banging.

"I'm afraid if we call through the door, other people may hear," Clara whispered. "Do you think you can get in?"

Richard looked at the door lock and then looked back at Clara. "Hmm. I'm going to need. A hairpin." He reached over and pulled one from under her golden headband. He straightened it and inserted it to the keyhole. In a moment, he had the door open, and Clara swept past him before he can stop her.

"Gillian, Charlie..." she began, but then stopped talking and froze.

Mrs. Darmody's pale rear end was in the air facing them, with the top Luciano's head visible between her legs. It took Richard a second to realize what they were doing. It struck him he never realized that the two separate acts could be performed simultaneously. He grabbed Clara's arm and twirled her around before turning around himself.

"You two need to get dressed RIGHT NOW," Clara hissed over her shoulder. "Jimmy, Rothstein, MY FATHER, they will all be here in just a moment." For the first time since she met him, she was afraid to make eye contact with Richard. She could see him wringing his hands, so she knew he was at least as uncomfortable as she was. A hot flush started on her chest and spread up to her face. "I've read a lot of books, but I've never seen mention of that. I mean, I suppose I've read about the components, but never in the way they were putting them together."

Richard stares at the floor, rather wishing it would open and swallow him as behind him he heard the frantic sounds of Mrs. Darmody and Luciano dressing, and from the hallway, he heard the approaching footsteps of a group of men.


	12. Owe You One (Part 2)-January 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the party continues, Clara begins to question the coming coup against her father. (A/N at the end)

Damn it, Clara thought as she heard footsteps approaching. She rushed over to Charlie and Gillian, who were mercifully mostly dressed, took Gillan's arm and all but threw her to Richard.

"Richard, take Gillian through the waiter's hall down into the ballroom. The men are outside, Charlie and I will cover."

Richard looked back, not on board with the idea of leaving her alone with Luciano, but unable to come up with a better idea before Clara pushed them through the service door.

As soon as Clara shut the door Charlie advanced on her. "Are we going to pretend that you and I were alone in this room the whole time?" he asked with a smirk.

Clara glared openly. "Keep your mouth far away from me, coglione. Let's pretend to argue, I feel like we can do that easily."

Charlie gave her his most winning smile, which Clara answered with an eye roll, before he replied, "What, you haven't done a bocchino on your pet mostro?"

And with that, they were off. When Thompson opened the door Charlie and Clara were loudly yelling Italian insults at each with real passion.

"What the hell?" Thompson asked. How the fuck did Clara and Rothstein's errand boy end up screaming at each in the VIP Room? he wondered as he watched them.

Rothstein's eyes narrowed. Something didn't add up here. He thought of his wife's words-that Charlie didn't like Miss Thompson-so why were they locked in the room alone flinging insults at each other in Italian?

Jimmy been part of Clara's plotting since before they could walk, meaning he knew she was up to something. Richard had been watching her for hours, he thought, so how the hell did Clara end up here without Richard, but once more fighting with Luciano?

"My apologies, gentlemen. I was checking the room and found Mr. Luciano. Please, enjoy your evening," Clara swept out with as much grandeur as she could muster in the circumstances.

* * *

"Hmm. I think. We go. This way," Richard mumbled, unable to look anywhere but his shoes.

"Well, isn't nice for Clara that she has a champion to rescue her from whatever contretemps she finds herself in," Gillian said brightly, sizing up the man her son and Clara had both seemingly taken to so quickly. She didn't understand it. Just being near something so damaged made her skin crawl.

Richard didn't reply.

"Of course, Clara is a lot more like her father, like Nucky, than she'd like to admit. Clara enjoys playing Lady Bountiful." Gillian tilted her head and regarded Richard thoughtfully. The image of serious little Clara standing awkwardly in the dressing room of Blatts in far sexier lingerie than the girl had ever shown interest in before came back to Gillian.

Clara hadn't gone shopping for better underthings when she was engaged to Darcy Blane, a man Gillian herself would have happily married. The foolish, foolish little brat couldn't possibly have bought them for this broken remnant of a man, could she, Gillian wondered as she stared at him openly. How could any woman, much less one with the options Nucky's princess had before her, choose this?

Gillian's emotions formed a simmering cauldron of resentment at her core. Everything Gillian had, she fought for. Meanwhile, she'd watched Nucky hand everything to Clara on a silver platter, and Clara acted like none of it was of any importance. The only thing Clara valued was her friendship with Jimmy. The only thing Clara seemed to want was the one thing that was truly Gillian's. Now Clara had humiliated her by slamming into the VIP room and interrupting her interlude with Charlie. She'd already been angry since dinner about the Commodore suggesting Clara and Jimmy should have married. Angela was no prize, but she was moldable. Clara as a daughter in law? Impossible, she knew.

And beyond her anger at Clara, Gillian knew that however distasteful she found Harrow he was a necessary component for Jimmy's success in toppling Nucky. A Boy King required a loyal soldier. But this soldier seemed determined to play Knight in Shining Armor to the old King's daughter. Gillian knew in her bones Jimmy would be better served if Harrow's loyalty wasn't divided. Ending this childishness that divided his loyalty shouldn't be terribly difficult, Gillian decided.

"Clara is still young and very foolish. Sometimes she thinks she's being kind, but she's really being cruel because her kindness allows people to think things are possible that are not. And soon of course this will come to an end. Nucky has plans for his daughter, and when the day comes she bows to his wishes she'll leave all her little strays behind. And we all know that day is coming is soon, don't we?

"And of course with her mother's history, Clara is...well. I'm sure it's lovely for her to have a man in her life whom she knows he's not even thinking sex could be a possibility. But after all, Clara will need a whole man when she finally puts away childish things, won't she?" Gillian smiled as she swept past him and back onto the main floor.

Richard stood in the hallway, unable to move. He never understood why Clara-or Jimmy, for that matter-befriended him. With Jimmy, at least, there was the shared experience of the War. But Clara...the idea that it was all because of some sort of charity made his stomach turn. He remembered when Nucky had called him a stray that morning at the townhouse, but he had been too upset to consider what Nucky could have meant. He had let himself believe that Clara simply thought of him as her friend. Even though sometimes he got confused, like tonight on the dance floor, when she seemed so close and suddenly all he could think about was what she would taste like if he leaned down and kissed her. For one wild moment he thought she was looking at him with the same desire.

He had more than he ever thought he would, after the War, he reminded himself. The idea that a woman would just treat him like a person once seemed so foreign. The problem was it was hard not to want more. But now Mrs. Darmody put into words what he always had known down deep. Clara would get bored with being nice to him and move on with her life. To someone who could eat dinner with her, be a normal man with her.

Move on with her life with someone who wasn't him.

* * *

Clara stood on the balcony, watching the party she planned go on beneath her, making it sure everything was running smoothly, and trying to find Richard. Eli walked up and stood beside her.

"Did you know that your mother's parents didn't want her to be with your father?"

Clara blinked, not expecting this line of conversation. "No, I didn't."

"June's parents weren't crazy about me either, and Nucky thought I needed to wait to settle down. But your aunt? She's the best damn thing in my life. She's the one decision I always know was the right one to make."

"That's very sweet."

"Nucky, he was wrong to try and force you to marry Darcy. He thinks that's the kind of man you need to be happy, but he's wrong. He's wrong about many things, but he never thinks he is, so he feels just in pulling us along with his plans."

"I'm scared, Uncle Eli." Clara regarded her uncle, considering how much she dared say. She'd been dancing around this topic with Jimmy since the night of the election, but now she needed to know. She plunged in.

"I'm scared of whatever is going on with you, the Commodore, and Jimmy. And who knows who else? Tonight at dinner, the Commodore humiliated Angela, me, and Father. I'm not even sure why. Eddie Cantor diffused the situation with a joke. He said Father hasn't an enemy in the world-but all his friends hate him. And that's true, isn't it? All of his friends are turning against him, and he doesn't even see it."

Eli stared at her before answering. "You listed his sins on election night, Clara. At some point, you are going to have to decide. Are you with me, and Jimmy, and Harrow, or will you side with Nucky?"

Clara visibly flinched, one of her fears now confirmed. "So, Richard is part of this?"

"He's Jimmy's soldier."

"He's Jimmy's soldier, and because I'm a woman, I get no say in how this happens, but my life is still going to be shattered. Plus, I have to choose between my father and the men I love best?" Clara felt anger mixing with the unshed tears in her throat. And when she turned back to her face her uncle fury was evident on her face.

"What's the plan, Uncle Eli? Do you think Father will just take his toys and go home at the first sign of rebellion? Do you find the Commodore so trustworthy? Do you think Jimmy is ready to take over Atlantic City? He won't turn 23 until March. He was an excellent soldier, but he's never been a leader. Taking down Father will require tact, coalition building, and a whole host of skills that I don't think Jimmy has ever practiced. I don't think Father's good at the new part of the business, but who out of the three of you can do the things he does to run Atlantic City? Who will attend funerals, and whip up the votes, and do all the million things he is good at, and that the city requires to function?"

"That's what the Commodore is there for," Eli answered her.

"The Commodore? Who lost control of the city before Jimmy and I started high school? And what of Gillian? She's certainly cast herself as Lady Macbeth. The question is, does she see Jimmy or the Commodore as Macbeth himself?"

Eli looked directly at her. "Is that really a question?"

They stared at each for a moment; it was Clara who finally turned away. She's never sure what other people are aware of when it comes to Gillian and Jimmy. Almost everyone was aware there's something not quite right, but most simply assigned the feeling of unease to Gillian's terrible youth when she had Jimmy. Clara's watched Richard dance around the idea since practically the moment he arrived on the Boardwalk. She's had a ringside seat for Angela's confusion and slow dawning horror. She's seen her father purposefully ignore the signs throughout her life. But Clara has almost always known that Gillian's youth is just the tragic prologue to the relationship between Jimmy and his mother.

"Does he know?" Eli asked.

"Does Jimmy know that his relationship with Gillian is inappropriate? He's aware, but he'll never admit it," Clara said, her mind still firmly in the past.

Eli laughed. "That's not what I'm asking. I'm not your father, Dollface. I can see that you aren't meant to marry some bloodless Ivy League character. And that you are so in love with Harrow it's making you cross-eyed. Does Harrow know how you feel?"

"I'm sure I have no idea what you are talking about," Clara said, her public face sliding back into place.

"I'm talking about the fact that if your aunt and I hadn't walked when we did all of Atlantic City would have seen the two of you on the dance floor."

People could see, she thought, terror weaving into her feelings. If they could see, she was accidently putting Richard in danger.

"Are you going to lecture me about how we could never be together?"

Eli looked honestly confused. "No, I'm telling you I'm sorry that no matter what our intentions you are going to have a bad year, but if you love Harrow-and I think you do-you should do something about it. You aren't your parents, Clara. You aren't destined to make their mistakes or relive their tragedies."

Uncle Eli was always full of surprises, Clara thought.

* * *

Nucky Thompson surveyed the ballroom. There was no sign of Clara, Luciano, or even Harrow, for that matter. Since the kidnapping attempt, Harrow seemed to have taken Clara's safety as his personal mission. It was a relief, actually. Nucky knew that Clara was safe and that Harrow wouldn't get the wrong idea by proximity to her.

It was odd, Nucky thought, that Clara was alone with Luciano without Harrow lurking in the corner of the room. He did see Angela sitting alone at a table. 

"Mrs. Darmody, may I have this dance?" Nucky asked as he approached. Angela smiled her assent.

"I've been remiss in sending my congratulations about your marriage, my dear. And now Clara tells me you have a new house, as well?"

"Jimmy said he always wanted to live on the beach," Angela said.

Jimmy's always wanted a lot of things, Nucky thought. He also knew, because he had the property clerk pull the deed, that although the house was in Jimmy's name the Commodore paid. Nothing wrong with that. There would be a house for Clara when she finally married, but he'd always assumed that he would be the one to help Jimmy buy a house. He also wondered where the Commodore's generosity was when Nucky was paying for apartments, food, and doctors' visits for Angela and Tommy while Jimmy was away.

"I wanted to apologize for dinner," Nucky said. He didn't like how Clara was dragged into helping this girl and her child, but it wasn't Angela's fault. It was Jimmy's. "The Commodore was going after me, and you ended up in the crossfire."

Angela looked up with a sad smile. "Nucky, let's not pretend that the Commodore or Gillian think I'm a suitable wife for Jimmy."

"Neither of those two should be judging anyone."

"It's so odd to consider the Commodore my father-in-law," Angela was quiet for a moment, gathering her bravery before she continued. "As long as I've known Jimmy, I've always thought of you, Clara, and Gillian as his family. You helped us all those years he was gone. I barely knew the Commodore existed. He certainly never showed any interest in Tommy."

Nucky looked down at her, wondering exactly what her husband-or even Clara-had shared with her. At that moment, Clara darted onto the dance floor, weaving her way between dancing couples. Nucky watched her covertly and saw her approach Jimmy, who was standing by the bar. Jimmy reached out, gripped Clara's arm, and led her back through the foyer.

Nucky frowned, the Commodore's words replaying in his mind. Since they approached puberty he worried about Jimmy and Clara's friendship, but they had sworn they thought of each other as siblings. They certainly acted like siblings, Nucky thought. But he was starting to think he knew neither of them as well as he thought he did, and something was certainly going on with Clara. She'd ended things with Darcy Blane and shown zero interest in finding a suitable replacement. Mostly, she just sat at that damn typewriter or spent time with the Darmodys.

Sometimes he thought that she spent more time with Harrow than with anyone else, but that could easily be a cover for Jimmy. And something about the way she flew at Jimmy just now, and the oddness of the VIP room stuck with him.

"What the hell was that with you and Luciano?" Jimmy asked, lighting a cigarette, but before he could take a drag Clara had helped herself to it.

"Maybe ask yourself what woman in your life has a problem keeping her hands off Charlie Luciano and remember it isn't me?" Clara snapped but relinquished the cigarette after a few drags. "Meyer Lansky had to come tell Richard and me that your mother and Charlie were missing. Richard and I found them, I actually don't have the words for what we found them doing, moments before you all came into the VIP room, but believe me when I say you didn't want to see it. Richard got Gillian out while Charlie and I provided a distraction."

"Fuck," Jimmy said. Some little part of him actually thought his ma was happy to be with the Commodore, that maybe not everything had been a mistake.

"I'll take that as a thank you," Clara answered, reaching for the cigarette once more. They stood like that for a while, silently passing the cigarette back and forth.

Finally Clara knew she had to speak, that she had to try and make Jimmy see. "Jimmy, I don't know how to cope with what's about to happen. I feel like Cassandra. All I see is pain, and terror, and destruction. I don't see anyone winning. And I don't know how to get you to understand."

Jimmy avoided looking at Clara's face. "It's just going to be a political coup. Nucky would understand. He did the same thing to the Commodore."

"That was before," Clara said intently. "Let's not pretend that Prohibition hasn't changed everything. Rothstein, Luciano, even that little troll from Chicago-"

"Al isn't that bad, you are just crazy overprotective over-"

Clara sensed the trap Jimmy was laying for her and refused to be distracted. "The game is different now, Jimmy. And the Commodore has no idea how its played." Clara stopped. Treacherous sobs were in her throat, and it took her a second to be able to talk around them. "And it literally does not matter what I say, does it? The play has started, and all I can do is stand on the sidelines, because what am I but a woman?"

Clara walked away. She heard Jimmy calling her name, but she didn't turn around.

Margaret was standing inside the door, and Clara thought that the only way to describe her was starry-eyed. She was in love with what they created, with the whole stagecraft magic of the evening, and with the copious amounts of money that made it all possible.

"You did such a good job, Margaret. Everything is lovely," Clara said with real feeling. Margaret was very good at all this. Margaret might be her ticket to freedom. She'd already been freed from many of the luncheons and other responsibilities that had been hers since she left the War Department since Margaret came on the scene.

"Oh, I just.."

"Don't belittle your accomplishments. This was hard work. It took creativity, organization, societal awareness...a whole host of skills and knowledge. Not everyone can do it, and you are really good at it."

Clara smiled and walks away. Margaret stared after her a bit. Clara was hard to understand, but there is truth in the girl's words.

The world will knock you down enough; no use doing it yourself.

* * *

"Rothstein thinks I'm fucking you," a voice said behind Clara's head.

Luciano, she thought, seriously considering letting the sobs from earlier break free. She was tired, her shoes hurt, her dress was heavy, she was hungry, and the last thing she had the energy for was another round with Charlie Luciano.

"Could we not?" she asked softly, closing her eyes and pondering what would happen if she just sank to the floor.

Charlie started to smile and then stopped. "I owe you one. You didn't have to get me out of..."

Clara nodded. "It was trouble none of needed."

"But, it's still fair to ask...," Charlie said, his face breaking into a naughty grin, "did you like the merchandise?"

"You were doing SO WELL," Clara answered, but laughed. 

"I've never been friends with a girl I haven't fucked," Charlie admitted.

"Are we friends? Then stop calling Richard a monster, okay? The rest..." Clara rolled her eyes and then smiles. "I rather enjoy the rest. But I don't like that."

Charlie nodded. "Fine."

Clara wandered the dance floor, stopping to say hello to people. Rebecca Spencer waved her over, and since in theory they have been friends since grade school Clara stopped to talk with Rebecca and her husband. Finally, after what seems like hours, she spotted Richard. She waved at him across the dance floor before spotting Babette and whispering to her.

"Come with me?" Clara said softly and reached for Richard's hand before pulling him into a back hallway. She led him into a room overlooking the dance floor, where two small tables were set up. "I'm starving, you must be, I thought we could have supper."

Richard looked down. It's kind. It's probably the only way he'll be able to eat, and since it was three in the morning and he couldn't remember the last time he ate he was starving. Gillian's words reverberated in his mind, though, and he wondered what lay behind Clara's kindness. "Why?" he finally asked.

"Why do I want to eat supper with you?" Clara flinched before asking.

He looked at her quickly, and something about her face troubled him. She wasn't pretending to be happy or okay.

"Because typically you eat supper with the person you actually want to spend time with," she finally answered, grappling for some version of the truth that didn't threaten to cut her if it didn't land correctly.

It was Clara's turn to watch him. He was looking down at his feet, and the right side of his cheek was twitching hard. Something was wrong, she thought, but she was so tired and upset she couldn't investigate. Instead, she risked asking for what she wanted.

"Richard, what would you say if I asked you to go somewhere else. San Francisco, or New Orleans, or Cincinnati, or St. Louis. Just...somewhere else."

"You can't. Leave Atlantic City," Richard said.

Clara shook her head. "I can write from anywhere. I have money saved up. I don't think I want to be here for what comes next. You left home, you left Chicago, would you leave Atlantic City with me?"

Richard stared at her. He wasn't sure what she was asking of him. "I can't. Leave Jimmy."

Clara smiled, but it doesn't reach her eyes. Suddenly her face was blank, and it made him think of the Clara greeting the guests or attending events for her father.

"Jimmy's very lucky," she said softly before sitting down at her table.

She had known before she asked, of course. She had known he wouldn't leave Jimmy. She had known Jimmy wouldn't stop this stupid coup just because she asked. If her life had taught her anything, it was that she was never anyone's first choice. It was idiotic that she even asked. The food tasted like sawdust in her mouth, and the bubbles in the champage just like soap washing out her mouth for daring to speak words she knew would end in misery.

They ate in silence, with their backs to each other. Richard usually enjoyed their silences, because with Clara they weren't lonely. They almost felt like part of the conversation that had started back in Chicago. Finally he couldn't bare it. He turned to look at her, and watched her massaging her shoulders under the dress straps. Even in the darkness he could see the deep red grooves the straps of the dress had cut into her flesh.

Clara must have heard him because she stood up and moved to the window overlooking the dance floor and adjusted the curtains slightly before sitting on the floor. He wasn't sure what to do but finally made his way to her side.

"When Jimmy and I were younger, Father would let us and sometimes our friends sit up and here and watch his parties." Her voice was almost unbearably sad. It sounded...mournful, he thought. She was grieving something. Jimmy and Nucky, he realized. Clara saw something. It's why she wanted to leave.

For a moment he was tempted to grab her hand and tell her they could take the first train out of Atlantic City. But he owed a debt of loyalty to Jimmy. He couldn't leave Jimmy when Jimmy needed him. The need Jimmy had of him was simple and straightforward. Whatever was between him and Clara was far more complicated.

I can protect her, he thought. Whatever Jimmy is planning for Nucky, Richard decided, he could keep Clara safe and away from it. He wouldn't let anything happen to her.

She was trembling, though, so he took off his dinner jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She smiled up at him and took his hand to pull him down next to her. Their hands didn't let go even after he sat next to her. The ballroom, the people dancing, it all looked pretty from up above. And hidden from view, Clara's hand was warm in his and she told him funny stories about the denizens of Atlantic City partying below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What would it be like to watch your brother go after your father, and understand both why he's doing it and why you think he'll be unsuccessful? What would it be like to watch almost everyone you love become entrenched in organized crime?  
> Also, Angela talked about Nucky, but they never shared one single scene. It was nice to let the characters breathe enough to show the relationships they obviously had with each other. Let me know what you think!


	13. Et Sic Incipit: February 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place between episodes one (21) and two (Ourselves Alone) of Season Two. The conspiracy is showing itself with Nucky's arrest, and when Clara runs to Richard in the aftermath of her father's arrest THINGS HAPPEN. 

**February 14th, 1921**

There was a soft knock at his door. He sat straight up in bed, his heart pounding against his chest. Jimmy was going to New York. No one else should be knocking at his door-his landlady was away in Florida until March. Richard retrieved his Colt 1903 from the bottom shelf of the bedside table and immediately felt some of the anxiety dissipate as his fingers wrapped around the base of the gun.

"Richard, it's me. Are you home?" Clara's voice called from the other side of the door.

"Mmm. Mmm. One minute," he scratched out, the fear of why Clara is standing outside of his door late at night making him frantic with worry. He knew there wasn't going to be a happy reason she was there, at his door, in the middle of the night. He puts on the mask he took off, according to his watch, a few hours ago. It's almost one in the morning.

He opened the door, half expecting to find someone holding her there at gunpoint, but it was only Clara clutching a small bag.

Even when he'd seen her sleeping he'd never seen her look so disheveled. Her coat was unbuttoned, her hat was crooked, and her hair was falling from its pins. She looked like she was trying to hide her feelings, but the redness in her eyes told him she'd been crying. He flashed back to her face when he picked her up off the sidewalk on Pacific Avenue. She didn't look as terrified as she did after the d'Allessios kidnapping attempt, but he could tell something was seriously wrong. He reached around her to shut the door.

"I had to leave the Ritz," she said softly, her hands working over the handle to her bag. Clara looked over at the bed and could tell he's been asleep; the bed was mussed and his healthy cheek was warm and flushed looking. She'd seen him sleeping enough to know it's because he always slept on that side.

The only other men she'd seen in their undershirts were her father and Jimmy, who both wore the new knitted sleeveless kind. She always thought of Richard's sleeved shirts with buttons as old fashioned and intriguing, like they were a tangible difference between Richard and every other man in her life. Tonight he was wearing one, and is barefoot wearing what she presumes are his pajama pants. His hair hung on either side of his face and she pushed down the urge to touch it. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, adrenaline still coursing through her system, making her anxiety worse than usual, and now joined by the biting flame of something else as she stood in Richard's room.

"Clara. What. Happened." Richard could barely look at her, still trying to grapple with the idea that she was standing in his room.

"I was writing in my room when I heard a commotion. It was about seven o'clock? All of a sudden two men burst into my room with their guns out. They, they were New Jersey State Police. They made me stand against the wall..."

Cold fury started to rise in Richard's chest. The Commodore's plan. He stopped her, because he needed to move around to burn off the nervous energy building in his limbs and because he was overcome with the urge to do something for her.

"Mmm, it's not good to wear. Your coat indoors," he said before helping her take it off. He then stood in his room awkwardly, realizing there was no good place to put it. He finally hung it in his closet, where it looked odd hanging with his clothing.

"Is it all right if I sit down, or do you need me to leave? I know I woke you up." Clara asked, still standing in the middle of the room, spinning her hat in her hands.

"No," he walked to the bed to fix the covers. "Sit down."

Clara sat down. He stood awkwardly in front of her until Clara looked at him confusedly, and then took a deep breath and sat next to her. They both had their backs against the wall with their legs hanging off the side of the bed.

"They made Eddie and I sit on the sofa in the living room until my father came, and then they put handcuffs on him and took him out..." Clara's voice broke a little. The image of her father being helpless and under the control of other people had thrown her badly. "They asked me questions for hours. They started bringing things out of my room, asking me about the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the people I write books for?

" Then they destroyed my room. They cut the mattress, they threw all my papers on the floor, they took most of them. I'm supposed to turn in my next book in two weeks."

Without thought he reached for her hand and rubbed his thumb across the top of her hand. Jimmy, at one point, thought he could dethrone Nucky with no collateral damage. Richard knew there was always collateral damage. He just didn't want it to be Clara.

"They told me I could leave if I somewhere to go," Clara took a deep breath and and all I could think is that this is a nightmare, so I came to you."

He finally made eye contact with her.

It was difficult sometimes to see Clara, because then he missed her so much more when she's not around. He lay awake for nights after they returned from New York, thinking about how Clara felt laying on the sofa next to him.

The whole time he worked as her guard Jimmy kept apologizing, saying better days were coming. Most days, now that better days were here, he'd like to revisit the old ones. Knowing he would see her every day, hearing her talk about what she was writing, or what she was thinking made him feel less alone. It showed him a different world. He never knew people could have such passionate feelings about five and dime stores until the day Clara spent an hour explaining all the reasons why Woolworth's was superior to Newberry's.

Yesterday, or the day before, when he woke up thinking about the feel of her against his arm and it felt like actual physical pain not to have her near him. He hadn't actually hadn't seen her in almost two weeks, not since he left her the morning after the party. Watching the daily domesticity of Angela and Jimmy made the idea of ever again waking up and knowing he was going to get to start the day by seeing Clara seem like a fantasy.

He knew that simple things like kissing her casually when he walked by her, or even eating breakfast with her were just daydreams better suited to his scrapbooks than reality. Seeing Angela smooth Jimmy's hair as she set breakfast down proved too much. He asked Jimmy what that was like, to have everything, but Jimmy hadn't understood.

Richard was beginning to doubt that Jimmy understood how to appreciate anything he had.

He looked down at Clara's hand under his. He also didn't understand why Clara seemed to seek him out. Gillian Darmody's words had played in his mind like a record scratch since the night of the ball.

When he started talking, he didn't lookup. "Why? Are you. My friend."

She had headed to Richard's almost on pure instinct when the police told her she could leave. Although he had walked her to the Ritz and things had been fine when the ball was over, part of her still smarted from his refusal to leave with her. Clara sighed. It was a hare-brained scheme, she knew, and she hadn't really thought before she asked him. The weight of Jimmy's scheme, the Commodore's scheme, against her father balancing against the knowledge of what her father did to Gillian had been more than she thought she could bear. And she hadn't seen him since, although she missed him terribly and thought about the moment on the dance floor far more than she should have. How could he not know what she felt?

Clara twisted so that she was looking directly at him, but didn't move her hand from his. "Richard. How could I not be the friend of the person who took me in when I was scared in Chicago, treats my writing seriously, was the only person who cared if I loved my fiancé, kept me sane when I was stuck at Margaret's, saved my life, helped me when I was injured, held my hand when I was scared, protected me when I left Darcy, still teases me about my uneven pluckiness, was the only person who knew I wanted typewriter, tried to teach me to ice skate, got drunk with me in New York, picked Tommy up a hundred times at the Automat without complaint, was ready to fight Charlie Luciano for me, came to that awful party, brought me punch, danced with me...you are kind, and polite, and one of the very few people in my life who likes me just for me and not because of who my father is."

Now Clara looked down at their hands, fearful of eye contact as she searched for the right words. "I don't go around holding hands with my friends. I don't climb on the sofa with random people because they are having nightmares. I don't show up at the home of acquaintances when I'm scared and my life is crashing down around me."

Richard swallowed several times. He knew her well enough to know she was telling the truth. He also knew that no matter how much she considered him a friend, part of her found him repulsive. They sat silently for awhile, and then he felt the bed shift under them as Clara moved closer to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. 

"Tell me something about you as a boy," Clara said, trying to get him to talk.

He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eye. "Mmm. I liked stars. I knew. All the constellations. So I was very. Excited. About Haley's Comet. In 1910." He felt her nod against his shoulder. "I went outside. Every night. My father was angry. Mmm. But my mother insisted they. Let me. Emma said. It was silly."

"You never talk about your parents."

He let his head fall against hers and felt her fingers press tighter against his in response. Her leg was now laying against his and he tried to ignore the feeling. "My mother, mmm, she was younger. Than my father. She'd been. A teacher. She was from. Milwaukee." His mouth pulled, and it took him a second to continue. "She died. Mmm. After I was injured. But before I got. Back."

"The flu?" she asked quietly. She could suddenly feel the fabric of the mask she wore throughout the winter of 18-19 as every decision her bosses made caused the disease to spread further. 

Richard nodded. "Mmm. I was glad. She didn't. See me like. This."

Clara tightened her grip on his hand as she lifted her head. "Richard, she was your mother. She would have cared that you hurt, but not...about the rest of it."

He swallowed, several times, before he reached over her to the thermos on the bedside table. His mouth was unbearably dry. Clara sat back and looks away, and he turned, took the mask off, and drank from the thermos. Too late, he realized he didn't have a handkerchief. He tried to wipe the escaping water with his hand. Damn it, he thought. He couldn't turn around and let Clara see this. Clara's hand on his shoulder, making his panic rise more, but then felt something pressing into his hand.

He used Clara's handkerchief to mop up his mess. He stood up, still turned away from her. He's upset enough that he forgot the mask was laying on the bed. "No one. Wants to see. This. Mmm. Children cry. People. Turn away. I can't. Drink. Or eat. Or do anything. Normally. The mask. Is hot. And is horrible. It makes me. A monster. But without it. It's even. Worse. They should have. Let me die. No one can be glad. I survived."

"I am," Clara said as she stood up. "I'm glad you survived. What...what would I do without you?"

Richard closed his eye. "I'm glad. I was there. To save you."

"Yes, but that's not why I'm glad. I'm just...glad you are here," Clara cleared her throat, and stared off into the distance, trying to gather her nerve. "I'm happier on the days I see you than on the days I don't."

Richard shook his head. "Mmm. We are friends. But you're nice. You pretend. It doesn't repulse. You. When it does."

Clara smiled a little. "You are the only person who thinks I'm that nice. I am confused, though. Why do you think it repulses me?" She puts pressure on his arm but he refuses to turn around.

It took him a moment to answer her. "The morning. I scared. Mmm. Emily Schroeder."

Clara was genuinely confused, thinking back over that morning. Her pajama-clad leg brushing against his, the way her concern had started to shift to something else. The fact that she had started to lean forward until the moment her father called down the stairs.

"You think you repulsed me? Oh, Richard, no. No." Clara took a deep breath and steeled herself. Time for pluckiness, she thought. She slid around him, until she was between him and the desk. He was looking down, so she reached for his hands.

"You were. Telling me. It was going. Mmm. To be. Okay. And then. Your face. Changed."

Clara felt the heat flood her face. She closed her eyes. "No. Now I'm very concerned about my facial expressions, though," Clara looked up and tried to smile to cover the awkwardness. "Richard, I...I looked like that because I was thinking about kissing you. The only thing that stopped me was my father calling me upstairs."

He looked at her quickly, and then down again. He felt her fingertips against his jaw and she pushed gently to make him look up at her.

"I think about kissing you. A lot. Do you think about kissing me?"

Richard's eye darted around her face, and she could see his pulse quicken in his throat. Her heart was beating so quickly she thought he could probably hear it.

The silence went a moment to long and Clara wondered if she'd actually die of shame if he didn't soon answer.

"Yes," he said finally, but looked at her like he didn't actually believe she's asked the question.

Clara leaned up to him, feeling the stubble of his beard and the hairs in his mustache against her skin before her lips brushed against his.

The pounding of her heart grew even stronger at the same time as it felt as though her knees were growing weaker. The kiss started hesitantly, their shyness and the suddenness of this long delayed moment making them awkward. Slowly, though, they fell into a rhythm punctuated by gasps and sudden thrills of feeling as they sank into each other.

Mostly Clara felt the overwhelm of her senses. He tasted like toothpaste, he smelled clean and warm from soap and sleep, and the softness of his mouth against hers was contrasted by the mild abrasiveness of his stubble rubbing against the flesh of her face. When she let her eyelids flutter open she could even see him. One of his hands trailed up her back, making it arch with every movement and causing her to gasp into his mouth. His other hand curled around hers, and it felt both the same and different from the other times he had taken her hand. It felt like she was starting to get an answer to a question she first thought of all the way back on that summer day in Chicago.

It had to be a dream, Richard thought. At any moment he expected to wake up and find himself alone in his bed while Clara slept blocks away in her bed at the Ritz. He kept opening his eye to look at her to make sure she was really there. The absolute way she was there was almost dizzying. He had been close enough to her to know she usually smelled like the orange scented soap she liked, but now that was all he could smell. The warmth of her breath against his face when they stopped long enough to take ragged half breaths felt like an invitation he hadn't known he was waiting for. Her mouth tasted vaguely like butterscotch, making him think she was probably eating penny candy while she wrote before the police destroyed her night.

At first, he feared she would turn away when the ruined corner of his mouth touched hers, but the hand twining in the back of his hair and the press of her body against his slowly made him more confident. When he trailed his hand down her back and heard her gasp his name and go rigid in response he was emboldened to lift her to sit on top of his desk. She moved her hands up to his head, and he could feel the light scrape of her nails against his scalp as she ran her hands through his hair. He put his hands on either side of her face, his thumbs rubbing back and forth against her face as their mouths melted together again.

Clara was surprised by the boldness of Richard lifting her into the desk. Her thoughts were spinning down into a chorus of more, more, more, and closer, closer, closer as the kiss went deeper than any she had known before and she lost all conception of time.

Finally, they pulled apart enough to actually breathe, and because both were beginning to be aware that if they didn't stop there was a chance they wouldn't be able to stop. The room was filled with the sound of their breathing.

"Oh my goodness," Clara said breathlessly.


	14. Fossils and Ambitions-February 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during and directly after "Ourselves Alone." Richard and Clara go on a trip; Nucky confronts Clara about the conspiracy; Richard confides in Jimmy; Jimmy and Clara talk.

**February 14th, 1921: Atlantic City and Washington, D.C.**

While Clara changed into her pajamas in the bathroom, Richard took the extra blanket from the closet and laid it on the floor next to the bed.

"What's this?" she asked when she walked back into the room. She toyed with the hem of her pajama top because, she reflected, it was a little anxiety-provoking to change into pajamas and walk back out to the bedroom of the man after kissing him. Her anxiety was worsened by the fact she'd forgotten to grab her kimono in her haste to get out of the Ritz, and so she didn't have anything to cover up with.

Richard looked down at his feet. "Mmm, you can. Have the bed."

"I'll sleep on the floor. I'm here uninvited. I burst into your room..." Richard shook his head. "Or, we shared the sofa in New York. I'm sure we can manage to share this." She wasn't sure, actually, but she was willing to try. She laid down on her side against the wall and closed her eyes. The room was silent, and curiosity made her desperately want to open her eyes until she felt the mattress dip when Richard sat down. She heard the bedside lamp being extinguished. The mask made a distinct noise when he placed it on the bedside table. She kept her eyes closed while he lifted the blanket and stretched out next to her. The narrowness of the bed meant their feet and legs entangled immediately, but it was the feel of his breath on her face and his hand tentatively landing on her waist that made her finally open her eyes to find him looking at her.

"Mmm, I..."

"You don't have to ask," she said quietly. In a few seconds, his mouth was back on hers.

The early morning light cast odd shadows around the room. As Richard woke up, he felt like every part of him was entwined with Clara. He didn't ever want to move, but suddenly he realizes he's pressed against her leg and it's becoming more noticeable with every passing second. He didn't want to frighten her when she woke up, so he slowly started pulling away from her. When he stood up, Clara stirred and reached for his hand. He told her he'd be back, and watched as she fell back to sleep.

When he returned, Clara was dressed and standing in front of the mirror pinning her hair. The bed had been made, badly.

"Here's breakfast."

"Thank you, I never ate dinner last night, I'm starving." He put her food down on the desk and set his on the dresser.

"I have to. Go to D.C. And drop something off." Richard told her.

"Oh, I can go somewhere..."

He shook his head and looked right at her, which made her breath catch. "I thought. You could. Come with me."

Clara smiled at him.

Everything felt so good that it made Richard nervous. It was as if one of the collages from his book was coming to life around him. He wasn't able to sit at a table with her, but she was at the desk while he stood across from her at the dresser eating breakfast. He helped her with her coat. She had to stop and call the Ritz (Eddie told her in no uncertain terms to stay away), but then she was his for the entire day. Instead of a long, lonely car ride Clara sat next to him, read him articles from the newspaper (although he noticed not the ones about her father covering the front page), convinced him to play twenty questions, and sometimes just looked out the window. He thought, silence is nicer when it's shared.

When they finally arrived in Washington, she directed him to Mount Vernon Square and the largest library he'd ever seen. The building was made of marble and looked at how he'd always imagined the Capitol to look. He left her there and went to run Jimmy's errand.

When he came back, he walked past the oak counter and up the large staircase to the reference room. Clara was at a table with a stack of books, frowning as she wrote notes, so focused she didn't notice him watching her. She finally saw him, smiled, and gathered her things.

"Does. All of the Capitol. Look like. This?"

"You've never been here before? Do we have time to sightsee?"

Richard nodded. "The car. Has headlights. We can do. Whatever you want."

First, she directed him north through the city to the Mall so she could show him the Capital building and the White House. "Can you believe that fool Harding is going to be president in about five weeks?"

"He won't. Be good. For the country," Richard said. "Did you ever tell. Your father?"

Clara laughed. "That I didn't vote for Harding? I told no one but you."

"The Democrats. Should have nominated. McAdoo. I did like. The vice-president."

"Considering how Franklin Roosevelt went after Tammany Hall? I wouldn't mention that to Rothstein next time you see him."

Following Clara's directions, he parked in front of another columned white building with a golden dome rising from the roofline. Clara's face was bright with excitement as she took his hand and pulled him along with her. When they approached the counter in the rotunda Clara took her wallet from her purse.

"Mmm, no," Richard started to object.

Clara shook her head. "No, please. This was my idea, let me."

After she bought their tickets she led him up a staircase bathed in light from the windows in the golden dome he noticed earlier. When they stepped onto the landing of the second floor Richard froze. He'd read about them since he was a little boy, but somehow never realized he could simply go see them.

The light danced down the bleached bones of two large creatures, one on four legs with a long neck and tail, one on its hind legs with short arms sticking out. Richard never let go of her hand, but went from exhibit to exhibit, reading with each display with complete concentration.

"I always. Liked. The brontosaurus. Best. But I didn't know. It would. Be. Like this." Clara smiled up at him, thrilled that he was as happy as she thought he might be. The right side of his face was relaxed, and he looked like he was genuinely having a good time. 

"I like the T-Rex. We share an issue with short arms," Clara said, imitating the tyrannosaurus.

He made a noise that Clara thought might a laugh. "Your arms. Are fine. But do you know. Mmm. Who looks like a T-Rex? Alderman Neary."

Clara clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. "Oh my goodness, I will never be able to look at him again."

"Excuse me," an older man said to them. Clara feared her laughter had brought the museum staff over to chastise them. "I just wanted to say thank you for your service."

Richard almost visibly pulled back into himself. His head dipped, and he looked down at the ground.

"And you, miss, how kind to bring your brother here for the day."

What Clara wanted to do was rip the man's teeth out with her hatpin. Instead, she wrapped her arm through Richard's and fixed the man with her haughtiest gaze. "He's not my brother, and he brought me."

The man had the grace to look uncomfortable, but not the insight to understand why. He mumbled good-bye and walked away. Clara tried to get her rage under control.

"I can't abide people like that," Clara said. "How easy to feel like you really did something to help when all you did is interrupt someone's day."

Richard doesn't respond. Clara's heart sank. She led him back to a bench and sat down.

"That's. What it would always. Be like."

"So? People will always find a reason to talk." He didn't answer. "Did you know I used to work here?"

"With. Mmm. The dinosaurs?"

Clara smiled tightly. "I considered them colleagues. I named Alderman Neary over there Punch and the brontosaurus Judy. During the war, the War Department took this building over. My table was over in that corner. I was transferred to Washington and the actuarial department after the Armistice. I sat over there under those dinosaur bones and filled out reports about the dead, dying, and..." her voice catches slightly. "Maimed. From December 1st, 1918 until December, 1st 1919 I helped catalog America's dead and wounded. And the thing is I still don't why any of it happened. I'd go visit Jimmy at Walter Reed and wonder what in God's name made all that suffering worth it."

"Mmm, I got a draft. Card. Then they. Gave me a sniper's shield. Told me to kill. I still. Don't know. Why. Germany had accepted they. Were going. To lose. But they still blew my face off. Before the fighting ended. Then the Army gave me. A metal mask. And sixty dollars."

They sat silently for a while. "I went home that spring for Easter, and Father was entertaining the Yacht Club set. This one old man-I've always thought he was horrid-he started talking about how much money he made off the war, and I swear I considered sliding my steak knife between his ribs." Clara stared off in the distance. "I'm not comparing..."

"I know. Mmm. Next time. You see him. Tell him I'm sorry. I had but one face to give. For his cause."

Richard looked down at his hands, which were twisting around each other. Clara blinked hard and smoothed her skirt repeatedly.

"Am I. More war work. Or. Mmm. A fossil. You've befriended?"

Clara turned and put her hands on his shoulders. "Do you know how many wounded veterans and soldiers I've met? Countless. Do you know how many I've had feelings for? One. You."

They left the museum and walked back out to the car. Richard opened her door and helped her up. "I always wanted. To see. Dinosaurs. I'm having. A good. Day," he said softly before she pulled her hand away.

Fear licked at Clara. She didn't want to mess this up, and the situation seemed fraught. Finally, she leaned forward and aimed her mouth slightly right of center. The feeling of the cold tin under the right side of her mouth contrasted sharply with the warmth under the left side, but slowly they worked out the mechanics of it all.

**February 15th, 1921: The Ritz-Carlton**

Nucky opened his daughter's door without knocking. He watched her sitting on her bed with her back to him sorting papers. Dressed in a ridiculous cardigan and skirt, with her hair hanging down unpinned, she looked like the schoolgirl that, to him, she was just yesterday. Fresh fury rose up in him at the thought of Clara sitting on the sofa surrounded by State Patrol Officers while he was put in handcuffs and led away. When she turned and smiled at him her expression looked so much like Mabel's that it took his breath away.

Clara stepped down off the bed and awkwardly hugged her father. Usually when Clara comes in late no one notices, but early this morning when Richard dropped her off Eddie was awake and trying to get the suite put back together. He said nothing of the late hour (nor anything of the fact that her face was pink from beard burn), but told her Nucky was fine and at Margaret's. It was still reassuring to see her father in the flesh.

"Are you all right?" Clara asked.

Nucky nodded. "Are you?"

Clara smiled and gestured around the wreck of her room. "I fared better than my room did, I fear."

"Where did you go?" Nucky asked, expecting her to say to Jimmy, where she always runs when in trouble. He should have never let that fucking relationship develop, but who would have dreamed that at almost twenty-three that they would still be clinging to the fiction they were siblings? Who would have foreseen James's perfidy?

"I hid, and then I went down to D.C. I just wanted to be out of the way because the officers asked me so many questions before they let me leave."

"What did you tell them?" Nucky said, so distracted by the idea of Clara being questioned he doesn't parse the idea of where she hid.

Clara shrugs. "Don't worry, I acted like a foolish little rich girl who hasn't a single clue what goes on around her, and," she gestures to the suite, "that's what they saw so they believed it."

"Come breakfast with me."

The first course, broiled grapefruit, is already laid out. Clara felt like she was looking at everything for the first time. It's the same sense of discombobulation she had when she came back after working in New York and D.C. It was all too much, and yet at the same time comfortingly familiar. When she looked at the grapefruit on its rimmed china plate, the sterling silver serrated spoon laid next to it, and the empty crystal glasses at the ready she couldn't help but compare it to the bacon roll and potato pancake she ate out of a paper box yesterday.

She picked up the spoon.

"You know who did this?" Nucky asked.

Clara considered making a joke about Eddie ordering breakfast but instead set the spoon back down.

"Yes," she carefully picked her words. "It's the Commodore's plan to overthrow you."

"Don't obfuscate the truth out of sentimentality, Clara. This is all James."

Clara looked up. She unconsciously pressed back against her chair when she saw the fury in her father's eyes. "No, he bears responsibility but this is the Commodore."

"They are all in it. All of them. Do you know who is involved?"

"Uncle Eli," she said quietly.

Nucky leaned back and regarded his daughter seriously. "How do you know?"

"Father, really? You spent all of last year-maybe all of our lives-moving us around like pieces on a chess board with not a care for what our plans for our lives were. Uncle Eli was beyond angry and hurt about the shenanigans with the sheriff's office. I hated Darcy Blaine and you didn't even notice in your haste to marry me off to him to score yourself a political advantage. And Jimmy? Can you imagine what he went through in the trenches, and then he comes back and we all want the Jimmy who left-"

"Clara, I do not have time-"

"No, please! He's different, certainly, and the boy we loved is gone. But he's still Jimmy, he just needed our support, our patience, and I think every one of us failed him. You, me...Gillian. And Gillian," Clara looked down, "She uses Jimmy to further her own agenda. She always has. She always will. And when she told him everything about how she came to be with the Commodore, he came to you. He was angry and he needed you to acknowledge what happened, but mostly he needed to know that you loved him, that everything you did for him wasn't out of guilt or obligation ..."

Nucky stood up and started to stride out of the room. Clara grabbed his arm as he walked past.

"Father, please, it's not too late..."

"Perhaps you are the foolish girl the state patrol took you for, Clara," Nucky said as he shook her off and left the room.

**February 15th, 1921: Jimmy's Car**

Jimmy could tell that Richard wanted to tell him something from the moment Jimmy got in the car, but he also knew that it would take Richard a bit to get the words out.

Jimmy was patient with Richard in a way he was patient in no other area of his life.

"Clara. Mmm. The police. Pulled a gun. On her. When they. Arrested Nucky. They. Scared her." Richard had to pause before finishing. "She was. Upset. About. Mmm. Her father. They arrested him. In front. Of her."

Fuck, Jimmy thought as he slammed his hand on the dash. He should have checked on Clara first thing this morning. He had tried to think of some way to get her away from the Ritz night before last, but it would have been evident what he was doing, so he had to leave her there.

"No one. Was there. To protect her. No one. Is looking out. For her."

Jimmy exhales sharply. "I'd never let anything happen to her. I've loved her..." He starts to say much longer than you have. "I've loved her my whole life. Whatever happens to Nucky, I'll always take care of Clara."

Both men are silent.

Something occurs to Jimmy. "Richard, how do you know? Did you see her yesterday?"

"Mmm."

Richard stares straight ahead, but his mouth is twisting terribly and keeps having to swallow. As always, he is genuinely awful at hiding things, and Jimmy pounces immediately.

"Richard, did she go to you after Nucky was arrested?"

Richard's hands start kneading the steering wheel. He finally gets out the words to tell Jimmy about Clara, showing up at his room in the middle of the night.

"Something happened between the two of you?" Jimmy coaxes him.

"Mmm. I would never. Take liberties."

Not laughing requires sheer willpower on Jimmy's part. "Richard, I think Clara would prefer you take a few liberties."

Richard doesn't answer. Jimmy knows he can needle the details out of Clara. Part of him thinks: yes, Clara and Richard could suit his plans well. He had told Angela that Richard and Clara would never work, but he'd wrong. Clara, who was good at hiding things, was incapable of hiding her feelings for Richard. At this point, Nucky might be the only person in Atlantic City who hadn't wondered what the hell was going on between Richard and Clara. Those feelings might be the tipping point to pull Clara over to their side. Along with wanting her support, he knows that Clara is skilled at things that Angela and Gillian aren't. She can charm at civic improvement meetings, throw parties to win the support of government officials, and help him keep the city functioning. She won't like it, but he thinks she'll do it.

The other part of him is simply happy for them and happy for himself. He liked the foursome they were in New York. He liked the idea of a closed circle. He had long feared losing Clara to a husband who would pull her away from this life, and he didn't want to deal with Richard getting involved with a girl who didn't understand the life.

"Richard, I think it's great" Jimmy laid his hand on his friend's arm and squeezed. "But you know if you hurt her, I'll be forced to kill you. Painfully."

Richard nods. "I would. Expect you. To."

**February 15th, 1921: The Boardwalk**

Eddie knocked on Clara's door.

"Amory Blaine is on the line."

Clara walks out to the phone. "Isabelle Borgé speaking."

"Very funny, Isabelle. Meet me on the stairs?"

The sun was bright in the sky, but the wind off the ocean was bracingly cold. Jimmy was already huddled on the stairs with his bad leg (which ached like a bitch in this weather) stretched out before him when she arrived. Clara sat next to him without speaking, and took the deepest breath she could in the cold, trying to prepare herself.

Jimmy spoke before Clara could bring herself to start.

"I had an interesting conversation with Richard today," Jimmy looked over at her. Clara's eyes were bright, and her cheeks were pink. He didn't think it was all from the cold. "He told me about yesterday. I told him if he hurts you, I'll have to kill him."

"I wish you hadn't done that."

"What happened between you?"

Clara reaches for the cigarette. "I'm not answering that."

Jimmy runs his tongue across his bottom teeth and smirks at her. "All the way, huh?"

"You are despicable." She stares out at the ocean. "We...kissed."

"And then shared a bed innocently? That's sweet. What did you do in Washington?"

"We went to the Natural History Museum."

Jimmy stared at her and then started laughing. Clara's startled. It's been a while since she's heard Jimmy laugh, but she wishes she wasn't the reason why he was laughing. "Nucky Thompson's daughter is in Washington with the point man for one of the biggest bootlegging operations on the East Coast. He has a car, you both have money, no one knows where you are. You could do anything you want-go to any speakeasy, get a hotel room, whatever, and you went to look at fossils? How very fucking wholesome. Jesus, Clara."

"Do you want me to punch you?" Clara glared at him.

"He's not a virgin, you know," Jimmy told her, deciding directly mentioning Odette probably wasn't the best course of action. "You don't have to be gentle. But you might have to be the aggressor."

Jimmy watched Clara's face turn five different shades of red before her eyes flashed with anger.

"Do you think Richard and I could discuss this without you?"

Maybe, thinks Jimmy, but I think I'd die of old age waiting on you two to figure it the fuck out. He moves on the question where the answer worries him. "Why didn't you come to Angela and me?"

"I was scared and...I just went to Richard. But honestly, how could I have gone to you when you are the one who did it? Jimmy, not only did I have to watch my father get dragged out of the suite in handcuffs, but I was pushed against a wall with a gun to my back. It will take days to put my book back together after they trashed my room."

"I'm sorry, Clara. I didn't think..."

"No, you didn't think, you just gave in to your vaulting ambition and that's what worries me." She's silent for a moment, busying her hands with their cigarette. "Fuck, Jimmy. The KKK?"

He startles a bit at her language. Clara is no stranger to swearing- she's Nucky's daughter after all-but it's rare she does it.

"It's all just part.."

"Yes, of your fabled coup."

They look at each other for a long minute. "You could choose us," Jimmy says softly.

"How can I choose to side with the Commodore against my father?"

"How can you choose Nucky over me, Eli, and Richard?"

Clara pulls her knees to her chest and stares out over the ocean. "Do you remember the day you came home from Chicago?"

Jimmy nods, uncertain what Clara was going to say.

"I knew Prohibition was going to change everything...but going to Chicago, going to that house. That's when I saw just what that meant. And then you came back from Chicago and told me how well you did, and you were so different. And I started thinking about what 'did well' meant. And the money, my father's never been shy about it, but it started flowing so fast...

"All that's happened since Prohibition is like the booze itself. It tastes like wine, but it is poison. My father and Margaret were shot at, I was attacked, Uncle Eli was shot... People like Rothstein and Capone, and even Charlie, they are terrifying and suddenly they are part of our lives."

"But Richard isn't terrifying?"

Clara meets his gaze. "I know what Richard is. I worked for the War Department-I know what sharpshooters did in the war. I pieced together from your story that he's the one who killed the man who hurt your friend in Chicago. He shot a d'Allessio soldier inches from my face. And I know he killed that d'Allessio boy. There could well be others I don't know about, sure. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the murders here weren't at your behest or my father's. I'm not going to pretend that I don't read the newspaper and pick out murders committed with a trench knife and know what that means. For example, it's quite odd that you were in New York last night and this morning I read of two mobsters stabbed with a large knife in a Lower East Side park."

Jimmy takes a long drag off the cigarette. Fuck. Women were never supposed to know what went on. He had a feeling whoever made that rule hadn't met Clara Thompson when she went into Girl Reporter mode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although it sounds fantastic, the War Department really did take over the Smithsonian Natural History Museum during WWI and used it as office space. Smaller displays were put into storage, but the fossils were left in place and desks arranged around them. The building would have only been ten years old when Richard and Clara visit.


	15. One Night in Atlantic City-March 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot can happen over the course of one night in Atlantic City.   
> Trigger Warning: Discussion of canonical miscarriages and mental illness.

**Dinner at Margaret's-March 1921**

The slender brunette maid put down the soup course-turtle soup, which Clara absolutely despised-and walked back through the butler’s pantry.

“I wish to speak with you about my new driver, Mr. Sleater,” Nucky said to his daughter. He watched Clara absentmindedly pretend to take polite sips of the soup. As per usual, her mind seemed a million miles away. “Clara?”

“I’m sorry, your new driver?” Clara repeated, trying to remember if she's met anyone new working for her father. A few days ago, she thought, she was struggling with a box from the stationary store as she entered the suite and a younger man helped her. He had an accent, she remembered vaguely. She was in a hurry because she had an article due the next day and Richard had just managed to get a note to her asking if they could meet on the Boardwalk that evening. “The Irishman?”

Margaret stared at Nucky’s daughter, the young woman who politely played with the children when she came around, sent flowers whenever Margaret did her the slightest favor (Clara will doubtlessly send a thank you note and a bunch of tulips as thank you for the dinner she’s barely touching), and who never seemed quite real. To Margaret, Clara felt less like an actual person and more like an actress with a script listing the part ‘daughter of Enoch Thompson: Atlantic City Treasurer' and she performed the role when called upon. Still, she found it hard to believe that any warm-blooded young woman could be immune to Owen Sleater's appeal.

“The Irishman has all the maids and two of the neighbor-women all a twitter,” Margaret replied. She refused to think of her own reaction to his hazel eyes, wide smile, and infuriating manner.

“Is he particularly charming?” Clara asked, still trying to remember something about him.

“Yes, he is,” Nucky answered. “We’ve been down this path before, Clara. Please fight the urge to turn him into one of your rescued strays, your new best friend, or whatever it is you typically do. He’s not some lost little soul for you to adopt; he’s a skilled man with a job to do.”

I don’t even think I could pick this man out of a crowd, Clara thought with annoyance. “Okay."

Margaret stared at her. She wouldn't describe Clara as friendly. Margaret reflected that when she and the children left the old house last year she doubted Clara spared many thoughts for them. She was typically pleasant and always polite, but again Margaret thought back to the old house. The Clara who spent most of her time talking to the bodyguard, The Tin Man, wasn’t playing a part. She wasn’t being pleasant. That girl seemed real-friendly, interested, flawed-in a way that the mannered miss sitting at the table never did.

“Is it James, then?” Her father asked. Annoyance spread through Clara. She was sick to the death of this stupid, stupid war, and worst of all she knew it was still in the opening skirmishes. A real damn war transformed everything she thought her young adult years would be. When the actual war crashed to a close, it wasn't really over. She'd been charged with counting up the cost of the carnage while Jimmy lay in a hospital bed and stared at the ceiling as doctors plunged hardware into his thigh. Finally, they were home, but it felt like in an instant all her dreams for living with the sound of the ocean in her ear and the people she loved close at hand were drowning in a sea of illegal booze and utter carnage. She never wanted to count casualties like the petals on a daisy ever again, and yet sometimes she thought that she could detect the iron smell of blood seeping into all of their souls.

“Is what Jimmy?” She answered in her brightest social voice but with venom in her eyes.

“Are you in love with James?”

Clara wondered where this unexpected turn in the conversation originated from. She chose her words with intent. “Father, whatever issues you and Jimmy are having, he’s like my brother. I will always love James. Always. As a brother. Also, he’s married?”

“Yes, I appreciate how neither of you thought to tell me what the purpose of that little trip was until after you returned.”

Only a lifetime of being expected to perform well in public kept her from rolling her eyes. Father and Jimmy were like two children fighting over hurt feelings, she thought, except the toys they were throwing at each other could cause real damage.

“I still wonder if something isn’t going on with you,” Nucky said, trying to determine what about his daughter seemed different. She’s been different since those fucking d’Alessios attacked her and she foolishly blew up her life by ending her engagement with Darcy, he thought. But since the night he was arrested she had seemed even more different. Softer, dreamier, distracted, and yet always on edge. Was James trying to manipulate her?

Clara found the idea of her love for Richard being written all over her unsettling. She did not need her father heading down this path. “It’s been a trying year. But, just so we are clear, I’m not in love with Jimmy, Tommy, the Irishman, Eddie, Father Brennan, Uncle Eli, the Commodore, any of the alderman, any of your ward bosses or assistant ward bosses, any government official that comes to the Ritz, any staff member at the Ritz, Mr. Stratemeyer, Mr. White, your associates from New York, that horrid little troll from Chicago, Eddie Cantor, Babette, Mr. Whitlock, Mr. Neary, the men at the Chop Suey shop, President Harding, or Mayor Bador.” Clara paused, then smiled. “Well, perhaps I’m a little in love with Tommy.”

How very odd, Margaret thought, that Clara didn't simply declare she wasn't in love with anyone, and that the man she’s actually seen Clara seem like a real, warm young woman with isn’t on the list.

“And what of the Tin Man, dear?” Margaret asked, thinking of the time she looked back on the stairs as Emily screamed and saw Clara’s hands were on top of the bodyguard’s, Clara still in her pajamas, Mr. Harrow in his undershirt.

Clara smiled her best social smile, but said in a serious voice and with real feeling in her eyes, “I’m madly in love with Richard Harrow. The moment he asks, I’m his.”

Margaret was struck by how alike Clara and Enoch’s eyes are, and how Enoch didn’t look up to see what was in the eyes of his only living child. Margaret saw it, though. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that Clara’s blood ran hot.

“Very funny, Clara,” Nucky said as the maid came to clear the soup course away.

* * *

It’s the Irishman who drove Clara back to the Ritz since her father was staying (as usual) with Margaret. She made an effort to be friendly, partly because she’s rather ashamed that this man has apparently been around her without her notice, and partly because her father’s high-handed commands annoyed her. Mr. Sleater is attractive, she thought, but his charm is far too obvious for her taste. As he told her funny stories of Ireland, Clara realized his real job was to help her father fight Jimmy-and by extension Richard-and she felt like she was going to choke.

Owen Sleater noticed her obvious attempts at friendliness. She’s a right little madam, this one, he thought. He’d known many a rich girl, and Clara seemed no different. Spoiled, careless, and considered servants and employees beneath her notice.

Still, though, this was Thompson’s beloved princess and knowledge is power. He could sense her subtle excitement and desperation to get back to the Ritz. She must have evening plans, he thought. He dropped her by the lobby door, quickly parked the car, and jogged back to the lobby entrance. Instead of waiting by the elevators, Clara was walking out the door to the Boardwalk. He followed her.

Clara walked towards the Steel Pier before turning down an alley. Sleater dashed behind a potted tree. As she walked down the alley a tall, slim figure emerged from the shadows and took her hands in his before she leaned up to kiss him. The man turned his face slightly and the light hit it oddly.

 _Metal_.

Sleater almost laughed out loud. He'd seen-hell, he'd _had_ \- rich girls slumming, but Clara Thompson slumming it with the half-faced hitman was an unexpected turn of events. After a few minutes of talking and kissing, they walked hand in hand towards Connecticut Avenue. Sleater stayed far back, but he realized the girl must have Harrow's complete attention because Harrow never even looked back. A far cry from the man who immediately had the jump on him, Sleater thought. On the street, they spent about five minutes looking at a Model T that looked like every other Model T Sleater had ever seen. Clara was quite obviously excited, though, and the human side of Harrow's face displayed actual feelings. He looked proud and happy. Finally, Harrow helped her up into the car, but they stood there kissing for a few minutes before Harrow finally got in the driver's seat and drove away.

When Sleater goes back to his room he thought long and hard about how to use this knowledge to his advantage. Finally, he decided he'd do nothing. Right now, he was firmly in Thompson's good graces; telling Thompson his daughter was seeing his enemy's disfigured point man would be burning a potential advantage for no reason. But later, later that information might pay off with nice results. After all, it wasn't just Thompson but Harrow whom he now had power over.

Sleater thought about how Harrow looked at Clara Thompson; the same way someone burning in hell looked at an offer of salvation. Harrow may yet regret leaving him alive, he reflected with a grin.

* * *

Trying to find ways to spend time together wasn't simple, Clara thought as she quickly made her way across the lobby of the Ritz to the Boardwalk entrance. Mrs. Siddons was home from Florida, so going to Richard's was difficult. Clara cared little for her reputation, but she cared a lot about unnecessarily bringing Richard to her father's attention. She was realist enough to know her father's reaction to the idea she was with Richard wouldn't have been pleasant before the coup. Now? Shakespearean in nature, she thought. The last thing she wanted was for her father to decide that Richard was his personal enemy. She had taken a chance that her father would never pick up on the fact she hadn't listed Richard on the overview of men she wasn't in love with. She couldn't bring herself to deny her feelings. Admitting her feelings when Margaret did catch on was a risk, but Clara had gambled on the fact that her father never took her seriously.

Melting into the shadows was now second nature. He stood out of sight, hoping to see her turn into the alley, but not actually believing she would appear. Part of him waited in dread for the day Clara realized what he was and never wanted to see him again. That's when he saw her, wearing the gray coat and hat she wore on the train to New York. She smiled when he stepped out of the shadows into the light, and he took her hands when she gets close and as she leaned up to kiss him he heard her take the little half breath she always did before they kiss.

He breaks away and tells her he has a surprise. She teases him for clues as they walk down the alley toward the road.

Richard looks at her expectantly when they come to the street. At first, Clara just sees the Model T Richard usually drives, but then she realizes this car doesn't have the gouge on the bottom of the passenger door.

"This isn't the same car you usually have," Clara said. He’s definitely smiling, she thought. "Richard, did you buy it? That's amazing!"

They both know what Richard having a car meant. Freedom. It was ridiculous, Clara thought, that two adults had to sneak around like errant children. And yet. The fear of what her father was capable of doing worried her. She didn't want to make everything worse; not at this juncture, anyway. At some point, she knew her hand would be forced.

Clara was curled next to him as he drove, but her mind seemed far away. He hesitantly picked up her hand and wondered what was bothering her.

"I had a very odd dinner with my father, even by our standards. He's hired a new, well, Jimmy." Clara said, like she knew what he was thinking. "We started off dinner with Father basically accusing me of having feelings for this man, who I hadn't even noticed until he gave me a speech about how charming Mr. Sleater is, and Margaret fell all over herself recounting all the women currently making fools of themselves over him. I think perhaps they both have feelings for him."

"The Irishman?" Richard asked without thinking. He instantly disliked the idea of the Irishman around Clara. Anyone working as Nucky's bodyguard had total access to their floor of the hotel and to Clara. The ease with which Clara disappeared to spend time with him made him sure that no one was actually watching out for her. She was better protected when he and Jimmy were stationed in the suite. The only time he was sure she was safe was when he was with her, but he knew that he was often so distracted when he was with her that Tommy would be able to get the drop on them. No matter what happened with this war, he knew Jimmy would never hurt Clara. But he didn't feel the same about the Commodore, and God only knew what Capone and some of the others might come up with.

Clara laughed. "Oh, has he charmed as you as well?" As the words come out of her mouth she was hit with a feeling that the circumstances of Richard and Mr. Sleater meeting were hardly pleasant ones. "Of course he hasn't, what a silly thing to say. I was thinking in the car back to the hotel that my father hired this man to fight Jimmy." She was quiet for a moment, pushing back the ever-growing horror at the family fracas she feared was going to end up being fought with Gatling guns.

"Anyway, tell me the plans for the evening," she said, teasingly, even though she knew, because she didn't want to waste one more moment of their time together.

"Mmm. I thought. We could go. Stargazing." He couldn't look at her when he said it, but since Clara answered by leaning over and trailing kisses across his jawline he decided she approved of the plan.

They spread a blanket on the ground when they found a secluded spot. Clara sat, kicked her shoes off, and removed her hat. Richard sat next to her and covered them with the second blanket and sat with his arm behind her after he put his mask with the rest of their things.

"I'm glad you bought the car. One, because I really do enjoy stargazing," Clara said in a very prim voice before switching back to her normal tone, "but also because it worries me that you seem to think you don't deserve things. You deserve to be comfortable and happy, just like we all do."

He didn't know how to answer her. He didn't deserve happiness and comfort. Its why he didn't deserve her, although he can't bring himself to stop being around her.

Clara turned and nuzzled into his neck. She felt his hand work through her hair (she was going through hairpins at an unprecedented rate these days), and when he tipped her head back and kissed her there was no awkwardness or hesitancy. He had learned exactly what she liked over the last several weeks, and it almost felt like he was running a carefully planned assault on her senses. Except quickly she could feel the carefulness they've always had with each other melting away. Richard was lowering her onto her back, and her hands were pulling him down on top of her. She felt more than heard the groan deep in his throat when she wrapped one leg around his. The weight of his body on top of hers was both extraordinary and yet somehow familiar, and it increased her desire to have more of him. She started fumbling with his tie.

For a moment, he thought she was trying to choke him. It brought him back down to reality to realize he was pressed quite firmly against her and it was becoming more obvious with every passing moment. He went still.

"Are you okay?" Clara asked, worried she had done something wrong.

Richard rolled off her and sat up. Clara's heartbeat sped up for a different reason.

"I don't. Mmm. Want to scare you."

"Well, you are now because I don't know what's wrong." Clara replayed the last few minutes in her mind. "Did I hurt you trying to get your tie undone? That was far trickier than I thought it was going to be."

"Mmm. No," Richard wondered if it were possible that he was actually going to die of embarrassment.

Clara frowned, and then she figured it out. A moment later she realized she wasn't sure how to broach the subject either. She looked over at him. He was sitting with the damaged side of his face next to her. If they can't see each other this conversation might be slightly more bearable, she thought.

"This is all new for me, Richard. I've..." her voice broke and she forced herself to go on. "I've been with someone before, but it was hurried and during the war and. Well. It's different with us, because we've been friends for so long. You were one of my favorite people in the world before there was anything physical between us, and we seem to be in agreement that we are going to take our time? But I'm not a young girl. I know how...men work."

Richard stared straight ahead, forcing his mind not to picture Clara with someone else. They were friends, he thought, but that's why it was so important he didn't hurt her. Gillian Darmody's words were never far from his mind. "Someone told me that. Because of your mother. You are scared. I don't ever. Want to be. The reason you are scared."

Clara exhaled audibly. Fuck, she thought. She wasn't ready for this conversation. "I'm not scared of sex. I'm scared of turning into my mother. Richard, I think of her as being this sad woman who most days, once I started school, never even changed out of her nightgown. But that's not who she was. She went to college. She stayed when my father left. She taught school in Newark, even though her parents and my father were against it. She defied her father when she married mine. It's not that I'm afraid of miscarriages or even..." her voice cracks, "what happened with my brother. I mean, I don't want those things to happen, obviously. But I don't want to lose me, not like my mother lost herself.

"But that doesn't mean that I don't want..well, you. And eventually, I do want us to have children. But not until our lives are not...this. No wars, no bodyguards, just boringly normal. And until we get there, well, it's 1921, not 1821. There are precautions we can take."

Damn it, Clara thought, and felt heat rise in her face. She hadn't meant to admit all of that so baldly.

Richard picked up her hand. He wanted to live with Clara in a Sears Catalog House (he read the new catalog of houses each year with the same ferocity with which Clara read novels), come home to see her writing at her desk, a dog asleep in front of the fireplace, and the sound of children playing upstairs. Not long ago it all just seemed like a fantasy, but now Clara was saying she wanted him. She wanted a normal life and children. With him. But first, she just wanted him.

It didn't make talking with her about any of this any easier. "Once we. Start. It's hard for me. To talk. So I can't ask if you. Are okay. Mmm. Or if what I'm doing. Is okay."

Clara nodded. "Well, I trust you. We can always talk before, and if I'm not okay with something during I'll say something. And you have to let me know, too." She was quiet for a moment. "Do you have anything with you?"

It takes him a moment to work out what she's asking. He had thought about it, but it seemed presumptuous. And there was no question of taking chances. Knowing Clara as well as he did, he knew that having a feeling of control over when and how she decided to have children would help her cope. A surprise pregnancy, especially when their lives were in so much turmoil, would damage her terribly.

The story of Clara's mother horrified him from the first time she told him. He loved Clara's spiritedness. The idea that it could dissipate like her mother's was terrifying.

"No," he said.

"We could do other things," Clara said softly, before turning around so her back was facing him. "You'll have to unbutton my dress."

His hands shook, but he started working the small gray buttons loose. As her back emerged, he remembered how she trembled when he touched her back while they kissed. He leaned forward and kissed the top of her spine. Clara gasped and grabbed his leg, so he started working his way down until her dress was completely unbuttoned.

"My bra," Clara managed to get out. He tried, but fumbled badly. There were so many tiny hooks. Clara finally reached back and unhooked it, and then laid back across his lap.

Clara watched him pull the front of her dress down. His face was completely serious and reminded her of something. He was looking down at her like he was seeing something he had thought about a lot but never expected to see, and Clara realized it was the exact same face he made when he first saw the dinosaur fossils at the museum. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from giggling, and she felt a rush of affection for him. But when his hands started tracing around her torso she forgot about giggling.

Then, anyway. Their level of enthusiasm greatly outweighed their level of experience. Richard removed his own tie, but Clara broke a nail trying to unbuckle his belt. He got in a hurry trying to detach a stocking from her garter belt and almost took out part of his good cheek when the garter snapped unexpectedly.

There were also a lot of moments that went right. Richard had been looking at her legs since sat on that bed at the bordello, and getting to finally take her stocking off was a thrill. Clara had been fighting an urge to kiss his neck since at least October and was happy to indulge. Just being able to touch each other after so many months of pent up desire was amazing.

Finally, they both lay boneless and breathless curled around each other under the blanket. Richard thought he should pile their coats on top of them and help Clara back into the bodice of her dress; Clara thought she should take out the candy bar she had in her purse and split it with him. Instead, they fell asleep in a content pile.


	16. Ambitious Girls-April 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret helps Clara in an unexpected way, and is forced to reconsider her own notions; Clara and Angela talk.

The knock at her door startled Clara awake instantly. It wasn't Eddie's soft rap. He's the only one who approached her door these days, and usually only when she had a phone call or a delivery, or there was a message from her father. A wave of nostalgia hit her as she stumbled out of the blankets. She missed the days when the knock was just as likely to be Jimmy's fast knock accompanied by a 'Hey, Clara, open the damn door' or Richard's precise rhythm and his voice rasping 'It's Richard. Harrow' every time, like there was another Richard who regularly knocked on her bedroom door. She moved warily. She also missed living her life with less dread.

Margaret stood at the door. She took a deep breath as it opened, revealing Clara dressed in pink silk pajamas with her hair in a messy braid. She looked about fifteen. It made Margaret's sense of purpose waiver.

"Margaret?" Clara asked, worried about what circumstance could have possibly brought Margaret to the door to her room at this early morning hour.

"May I come in?"

Clara stepped out of the way, and Margaret walked into Clara's room for the first time. Suddenly it struck her that this girl grew up here, in a room on the eighth floor of the Ritz-Carlton. Bookshelves were crowded with pictures, keepsakes, and books ranging from children's novels to classic tomes. The door to the balcony was open, letting in both a sea breeze and the sound of the relentless beat of the ocean against the shore. The desk was covered with notebooks, a typewriter, and a stack of files.

"Is there anything wrong? Clara inquired, her voice heavy with sleep and concern.

"No." Margaret took a deep breath. "Clara, I wish we had taken the opportunity to become better friends before I came to ask you this."

Clara tilted her head. She owed Margaret a favor, so it mattered not what she was going to ask her, but now she was very curious." Margaret, you once did a very great kindness, and I am indebted to you. What do you need?"

"Oh," Margaret was startled, uncertain what kindness Clara could be speaking of. "Do you know who Marie Stopes is?"

This was an unexpected twist, Clara thought. "I've read _Married Love_. It was passed around between the women in the War Office like a dirty novel."

Margaret nodded. If Clara read the book, she wouldn't be terribly shocked by her proposal. "So, you've also heard of Margaret Sanger?"

Suddenly the conversation began to make sense to Clara. "Margaret, do you need a birth control device? I know there are underground clinics, I might know someone..." Because I'm in need of one myself, Clara thought, and have been writing letters all week.

"Yes, dear, I do. This doesn't seem a fortuitous time for your father and me to have a child."

Clara was thrown by the idea of her father having children with Margaret. It seemed wrong, somehow. It was the time in her life for nieces and nephews (Tommy would turn four over the summer), her friends' babies, and thinking about when and how she might have a family of her own. Not for baby siblings. But of course, she thought, Margaret was only five or so years older than she was. There was no reason Margaret and her father wouldn't have children.

"A friend in the temperance movement shares friends with Mrs. Sanger and has booked me an appointment today in New York. I made two appointments, Clara. One for myself and one for my stepdaughter. I lied and said you plan on marrying this summer."

Clara blinked hard.

"I know about your mother, dear, and I also know what it is to be a young woman. The world doesn't look kindly on ambitious girls," Margaret waved her hand at the desk covered in writing materials, "nor young women determined to carve their own path. If you think this would help you make your own choices in life, then I hope you'll accompany me."

Out of every possible thing Margaret could have come to tell her, this was the last thing Clara would have guessed. It didn't mean, though, that she couldn't recognize an opportunity when one was dangled before her.

"I just need to bathe and dress," Clara said.

Margaret used the time to look around Clara's room. The shelves had multiple framed pictures in front of the haphazardly stacked books. Nucky had dismissed the idea that Clara considered Jimmy her brother, but the pictures didn't lie. Clara and Jimmy as babies. Clara and Jimmy as schoolchildren. Clara and Jimmy as teenagers. Clara and Jimmy graduating from high school with a beaming Nucky standing between them, an arm around each. Jimmy, in his uniform, and Clara - both trying to look brave. Clara with Jimmy's wife and little boy, and more pictures just of the little boy. A picture of Clara, Jimmy, his wife, and Mr. Harrow. Who could miss the way the Tin Man looked at Clara, or the way her head and eyes tilted toward him like the Darmodys weren't even in the picture?

Whatever fortune had in store for these two, Margaret was sure of one thing. When Nucky finally-and at this point, she thought he might be the very last person to put it together in all of Atlantic City- realized the daughter he planned on marrying into a political dynasty was in love with Richard Harrow all of New Jersey would hear his fury. She felt a flash of sympathy for Clara. When Nucky told her about the conspiracy, she had considered Clara an unfaithful daughter who chose her friends over her father. But looking at pictures of the girl's life... Clara was well and truly caught between the people she loved best on all sides.

Clara came out of the bathroom dressed in a blue suit and cloche hat at the same time that her father walked into her room.

"Margaret, Eddie said you were here in Clara's room. Why?"

"Margaret very kindly asked me to go into New York with her to go shopping," Clara said smoothly.

"Thank God," Nucky said. "You wore that dress last summer in Chicago, and I didn't like it much then. Honestly, Clara, you've looked like a complete ragamuffin all year. Go to Bonwit Teller and don't leave until you've run up a substantial bill and look fit to be my daughter."

When Nucky left, Clara turned to Margaret and said with a sigh, "Now we'll have to go shopping after our appointments."

Sitting on the train Margaret's stomach was full of butterflies. Clara sat in the aisle seat reading _The Age of Innocence_. How ironic, thought Margaret, the way Clara sat turning pages you'd think she really was just going into the city for a shopping trip.

"I've heard these exams can be quite gruesome."

Clara turned to face Margaret with a wide-eyed expression. "Yes, I've heard the same."

"And for young women who perhaps don't have a lot of experience, they can be brutal."

"Thank you, Margaret. I'm aware. It's why I was reading to distract myself."

Margaret looked away. "I'm terribly sorry. It's just...you are a very difficult girl to understand." She wanted to ask Clara a multitude of questions. Why fall in love with Richard Harrow, instead of one of the rich boys her father intended her for? How far had she gone with him? Did he take the mask off? Margaret pushed down the desire to shudder at the thought of that damaged face looming over her during intimate moments.

She wanted to ask the girl who was almost but not quite her stepdaughter if she'd already experienced it. The quick flash she had of his face before Clara jumped in front of him the day he scared Emily was enough to make her realize she never wanted to see him again without the mask, no matter how badly she felt for him. Clara hadn't even seemed surprised, though, Margaret realized. Had she already seen him without a mask before that morning?

"Am I? I don't think I'm such a mystery." Clara smoothed her skirt. She wasn't sure if she could indulge in girlish confidences with Margaret. Not because she didn't want to, but because she wasn't certain how much she could trust Margaret.

"I'm not sure what kindness I showed you."

"I'm not sure I've ever shown you a kindness, yet here you are, doing me one today," Clara said softly. "You made the children love Richard. That was a true kindness, Margaret. If the children had remained terrified of him? I don't think he would have survived it."

"You love him terribly," Margaret said simply.

"Is it that obvious?"

"You announced it at dinner, dear."

Clara smiled sadly. "My father didn't hear me."

No, Nucky didn't seem to hear anything that daughter whom he claimed to love so much said to him, Margaret thought. Fathers not understanding their young adult daughters was, of course, a tale as old as time, yet Enoch seriously seemed to have no idea who is daughter was. He had described Clara to her as a society girl excited to marry Darcy Blaine. Yet, the girl who moved into Margaret's townhouse last year seemed only excited about writing articles and talking to her bodyguard. Margaret thought that Enoch needed to learn who Clara actually was before he lost all chance of actually knowing his child.

Suddenly she thought back to the picture of Nucky standing proudly with Jimmy and Clara in graduation regalia. Did Nucky understand Jimmy as little as he understood Clara? Is that what led to the conspiracy against him? He was so good with Emily and Teddy and seemed to love their family life, yet before Emily and Teddy, there was Clara and Jimmy. Enoch had described how he cared for Jimmy and nursed him through childhood illnesses. A twinge of worry for her children's future nudged at her. Did Enoch only love them because they were little and easy? Once they grew and developed their own ideas about who they were and what they wanted out of life, would he end up at war with Teddy and endlessly perplexed by Emily, like he was Jimmy and Clara?

After the exam was over and Clara had her dutch cap carefully hidden in her handbag, she stood outside the Lower East Side terrace house containing the secret clinic waiting on Margaret. When Margaret walked outside, she saw Clara, who looked pale, and as she neared her she saw that Clara had dug her nails into the palms of her hands, leaving half-moon shaped scratches. She should have insisted on being with Clara during the exam, she thought suddenly. Clara always seemed so self-possessed, but Margaret realized she had no idea if the girl was experienced at all, and what unexpected horrors the exam might have presented to an inexperienced girl.

"Are you all right?" Margaret asked. "I'm not sure how much of a girl you still are, but I found that exam difficult to endure, and I've birthed two children."

"I'm grown-up enough to be grateful. I'd been writing letters, trying to find the clinic for a week, so don't fear you've corrupted me. You've just made my life a little easier," Clara took a deep breath. "And now, you must let me buy you lunch. 

Margaret smiled at Clara and then reached in her coat pocket to reveal a flask. "I thought we could both use this?"

It was Clara's turn to smile. "Well, if we go to the Colony they'll bring us empty teacups, and we can drink our whiskey like ladies."

* * *

"I can't believe your first book comes out tomorrow," Angela said as Clara folded herself into one of the large club chairs in the living room after giving Angela her present.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm not incredibly excited, even if it won't have my name on it. Cashing that check was one of the greatest thrills of my life."

Angela smiled down at her with a hint of sadness in her eyes. "I'm a little jealous. I'd love to say my art brought in money. I am almost finished with a new piece, but I suppose it will only get added to the pile."

"Well, you know I want to see it." 

Angela walked over to her easel and removed the draping covering her newest work.

"It's beautiful, Angela," Clara said as she examined it. "I mean, just her back displays so much...longing. And her hands are lovely."

Angela looked over at her friend. "Everyone wants to choose the right door to make a real connection. And thank you, I'm very proud of the hands. Also, thank you for the charcoal pencils. Why were you in New York?"

"Margaret made an appointment at one of Mrs. Sanger's clinics and took me to get a dutch cap." Clara looked straight ahead at the painting as she talked. 

Angela looked into the sunroom, where Tommy was occupied with blocks, and then walked into the kitchen and came back with a pitcher of lemonade, two glasses, and a bottle of whiskey Jimmy hid behind the flour bags.

"I feel like this conversation might go best with a drink?" Angela said lightly.

Clara laughed. They pushed the cocktail table away from the chairs and sat on the floor. Clara thought it was like they were back in the little Upper East Side apartment her father rented for them when Clara was working in New York, eating on the floor while baby Tommy slept in the bedroom. 

"I have the information if you need..." Clara began.

Angela shook her head. "That won't be necessary."

Clara wanted to ask her if it was because she and Jimmy were trying for another, or because things were going badly between them. She hoped it was the former, but felt it was probably the latter.

"To be honest, I'm more interested in the fact you feel you need one. Things must be...progressing?" Angela asked.

Mixing the exact right ratio of lemonade to whiskey seemed to take Clara's full attention. 

"I think you are smart if they are," Angela continued and lowered her voice even more. "I love Tommy and wouldn't trade him for anything, but I wish..." she let her voice trail off because she wasn't sure what she wished. Angela couldn't wish the child she loved didn't exist, but she wouldn't wish her life on anyone. "Although the war is over and Richard is so honorable that your situation would be very different."

"I don't want him to marry me because he's honorable," Clara said before downing half her drink. "Jimmy, I think, told him I'm afraid of sex. I'm not. I'm terribly afraid of pregnancy because how can I be sure I won't turn into my mother? But more than that, I'm not ready to be a mother. I want to have adventures. I want _us_ to have adventures together. I want to work on my career and figure out who I am beyond being Nucky Thompson's daughter. And if- when- I have children, I want them to have a very different childhood from mine." 

Angela knocked back her drink. "I wish I'd known who I was before I had Tommy. Hell, I wish I knew who I am now." 

"You are a really talented artist, an amazing mother, and a truly good friend." Both women are quiet. "Will you send Tommy to kindergarten when he turns five?" 

"Yes, he needs to be around other children."

"That means you'll have so much more freedom in just another year, Angela. You can devote more time to your art, and maybe even find ways to make money at it."

"I'm not going to pretend that doesn't all sound wonderful. Maybe I'll even try and get a job doing something artistic? Jimmy hasn't wanted me to work, but..."

"I love Jimmy, it doesn't mean I don't know he can be an absolute jerk," Clara said softly. "Tommy certainly hasn't interfered with Jimmy's ambitions, has he? Margaret told me that the world doesn't look kindly on ambitious girls, and she's right. We pay for our ambitions and desires in ways men never even conceive of. Even just being defined as ourselves or by own achievements and not simply as someone's mother, wife, daughter feels like the loftiest of goals."

They drink and watch Tommy, who builds towers and then throws his entire body onto them to knock them down. 

"I can't imagine Richard propositioning you," Angela said musingly as she finished her second drink. She felt Clara's anger and laughed when she looked at Clara's face. "Sometimes it's hard to believe you and Jimmy aren't blood. Both of you, and Tommy, all make the same face right before you get irrationally angry and slide into a tantrum. I'm not making fun of Richard; he's just so timid."

Clara exhaled, the alcohol making her emotions brew close to the surface. "That's what makes it so meaningful. Every gesture, every reach towards me requires bravery. They all come at a cost. And then suddenly I can tell they require less bravery, that he just knows I want him to hold my hand or kiss me and it's a little easier for him, and that's even more meaningful, somehow."

Angela blinked at her friend's sudden confession, but before she could follow up, Tommy came up to talk to them, and then it was time for Tommy to be put to bed. After he fell asleep, Angela and Clara resumed their attack on the bottle of whiskey.

Richard and Jimmy heard the sound of laughter from the driveway.

"Having a party?" Jimmy asked when he saw the bottle on the table and the bright faces of Angela and Clara. He didn't miss the way Clara smiled at him versus the way she looked at Richard.

"We are celebrating," Clara said, waving her arm to show the remnants of the whiskey bottle and almost knocking over the table.

"Yes, we can see. What's so great?" Jimmy asked.

Angela sighed, her happy buzz already retreating. "I finished a painting, and Clara's first book comes out tomorrow. We went to see if any store had them out early, but..."

"I have. A copy."

Richard had braved the Woolworth on the Boardwalk. Being out among people like that always made his hands move like they were seeking a piano or a trigger, but he wanted a copy of Clara's book. He went around to the loading dock and offered the stock boy $5 to open the carton of books early. When he was handed a copy of _Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest_ he decided enduring a shopping trip was worth it. Later in his room, he read it, and looked for all the bits of Clara she left behind in the book with Alice B. Emerson's name on it. It was easy to find her in the adventurous Ruth, with her pretty outfits, and a plan for every occasion. He wondered where Clara learned about making movies in California, or what it's like in the Pacific Northwest, but then remembered her bent over a pile of books at the D.C. library, intently making notes. Ruth narrowly escaped death a few times, which made him think of Clara's kidnapping attempt and made him worry that it still bothered her.

Clara looked up at him and smiled. "You read it?"

"She's a lot. Like you. Bossing people. Around. Mmm. And usually minutes away from disaster." 

"You're teasing me again," she says, trying not to laugh.

"Is he, though?" Angela laughed. "Oh!" She stands up and starts rifling through a drawer before handing Clara a pen. "You should write an inscription and sign it."

Clara caught his eye, and Richard nodded. 

"I don't know how you got a copy early," Clara said as she tapped the pen against the cover as she tried to decide how to combine what she wanted to write with what she felt comfortable writing. Finally, she finished and handed the book back to him. He slid it in his pocket, not wanting to read her words in front of Jimmy and Angela.

"Congratulations, Clara. It really is an accomplishment," Jimmy said. "But Richard and I have to go out of town and won't be back until the morning, and we need to leave."

"Clara, you should spend the night, then. It will be like old times. Jimmy, can you help me with something before you leave?" Angela asked while getting up to walk into the kitchen.

Clara held her hands up, and Richard helped her clamber to her feet. He leaned down to kiss her. "Tomorrow. Mmm. When I get back, we..."

"Yes."

He looked down at her. "I didn't say..."

"It doesn't matter, I'm in."

Later that night, after Richard's considered precisely how he'd like to kill Mickey Doyle on five different occasions, he finally was alone, and there was enough street light for him to read Clara's inscription.

_'My dearest, Richard,_

_Thank you for always respecting and never belittling my desire_

_to be an actual person with passions and thoughts and ambitions,_

_and for the myriad of ways you supported me._

_Love always,_

_Clara'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has the world ever been kind to ambitious girls? The women of the Boardwalk certainly paid for their ambitions, so it was nice to let them have some sisterly moments of solidarity.
> 
> Clara's dutch cap and the the underground clinics in the Lower East Side were all real. The clinics had to stay underground until the late 1920s. Clara's first book is a real title put out by the Stratemeyer Syndicate.
> 
> I would love to hear your thoughts!


	17. No One But Night-May 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Canonical suicide attempt; mental health issues abound. This is a very sad chapter.

He'd become so accustomed to the light that when the darkness fell again he'd forgotten how to live in it. At first, it seeped in through the edges, until finally the darkness infected the brightest parts of his life. The darkness was always there, of course. Sometimes it was pitch blackness and all-encompassing. It had been that way after the war. The darkness lay so heavy over his father's farm in Plover that he thought it would suffocate him. He hadn't known until he got home, until Emma stopped giving him so much morphine that he wasn't even able to think, how much of the light in Plover emanated from his mother. The house was sad and quiet and colder without her presence. His family was quieter and colder. Even Sampson seemed sadder.

It was better that his mother died before she had to see him like he was. Or at least that's what he told himself. It's what he told Clara. How much better was it that she died thinking of him as her handsome son, the boy whom she loved for his impractical dreaminess, which was so much like her own? How much better was it that she never knew that his face became that of a monster and that his soul followed suit? The truth was, though, he lay in his childhood bed and wanted his mother. Instead, it was just Sampson who laid on the foot of the bed, or it was until Emma would run him out, saying dogs didn't belong in the bedroom. He missed Sampson's wet, heavy breathing noises when he was gone.

Emma took good care of him. She was kind and efficient and didn't treat him any differently than she would have before the war. He appreciated it. Richard knew that his mother wouldn't have been able to be so practical. She would have cried. She would have broken down. Sometimes he thinks she would have kept going until she broke through his walls and made him feel something. Instead, the darkness devoured him, and he was comforted by the lack of feeling it offered. He didn't have to look at his sister and see her confusion as to why he wasn't the brother she grew up with.

The darkness was easier to bear in Chicago. Maybe, he'd later think, because he didn't expect any light there. He was prepared to live in the darkness. He grew accustomed to people not looking at him, and to living a life where no one ever touched him. Even the doctors and nurses at the veterans' hospital seemed to go out of their way not to touch him, or to do so as little as possible. How could he blame them?

When choices were offered that would consign him to deeper levels of the dark, he took them. He later would pray they were the right choices, but in the end, his ticket to hell was already stamped with the blood of German farm boys he picked off from atop a tree, so what did it really matter?

And then Jimmy, and then Odette, and then Clara. Jimmy shook his hand, patted him on the back, acted like he was another man friend. Then Jimmy paid Odette. Richard no longer had to fear being asked about his sexual history. It was now verifiable. He could say her name, name a place, say exactly what occurred. And Odette seemed like a miracle. She touched him. She touched him in all the ways that felt like they came out of a half-remembered dream, and in ways he never even dreamed possible. Maybe even better, she let him touch her. Not only was he starved for the feel of people touching him, but he was starved for the feeling of touching other people. He was still dreaming of Odette when Clara stumbled into Jimmy's bordello bedroom.

Clara. Clara was sunshine, although he knew she would laugh if he told her so and tell him only he thought she was nice. Clara, like his mother, made everything warmer. It felt like she aimed light at him until he started to notice the darkness receding slightly.

Still, the darkness found a way.

"Mmm. In your book. Ruth. Seemed a lot like you," Richard said as they went for a drive.

"If you think you influenced Tom Cameron, you did. Girls should know that there are men in the world who are supportive of their dreams and ambitions. It's...revelatory."

His hands want to wring against each other, but they have to settle for moving against the steering wheel.

"That's not. It. Mmm. Ruth almost. Died. A lot. And when the man grabbed her. And almost pushed her. Off a ledge."

Clara set her hand on top of his. "Mr. Stratemeyer gives me an outline with all the major events of the book. All of the attempts on Ruth's life-the purposeful ones and the accidental ones-were his idea, not mine. I just fleshed them out. It helped that I know what it feels like to be vulnerable in that manner, but I didn't write those scenes because what happened weighs on me."

He doesn't quite believe her. Clara doesn't lie, exactly, but she shades the truth sometimes. "Not ever?"

"I had a few dreams where I wasn't able to get the man to loosen his grip long enough for me to scream for you," Clara has to clear her throat to continue. "But once you ran around that corner, I knew I was safe. I knew you'd save me. I don't like people to grab me from behind, but other than..."

She laid her head against his arm, and he doesn't tell her that he had to blank out her face when he made that shot. It was the only way he could do it, it was the only way he could shoot so close to her head. He doesn't tell her that he had dreams for weeks afterward where he didn't hear her scream, and got in the car with her father and Jimmy, unknowingly leaving her to her fate. The idea that Clara could be screaming in terror, thinking he would save her and he wouldn't hear her still haunted him.

That night, though, the darkness had a new dream for him.

He sees the glint off the fender of the Buick, but doesn't register that it's headed the wrong way down the one-way street, just like he didn't realize it in life. He hears the silencer shot that killed O'Bryan. He starts running, yelling for Jimmy to cover Nucky. He hears Clara screaming his name. He turns the corner and sees her being held. He steadies the gun, ready to take his shot. But his hand flexes and the bullet cheats slightly left. Instead of striking the d'Alessio hired gun, it hits Clara. Under the eye. Through the cheek. When he gets to her she's barely alive, and she's looking up at him with blood pouring across her face, not understanding why he shot her. He wakes up screaming.

And then the darkness knows. It knows Clara is his soft spot. She begins appearing in other dreams.

It's the dream, the dream the predates Odette. It's the dream that made him hesitant to take the personality assessment the veteran's hospital asked him to complete, the one that led to meeting Jimmy. He's hurt. His face is unbearably hot, and the field hospital is in chaos. Suddenly, there's a girl with him. She's blind, and her eyes are bandaged. It's from mustard gas. He doesn't know why an American girl was near enough the front line to get gassed. What he does know is the nice nurse, the one with the English accent who would tell him stories about growing up in Yorkshire with her sisters when the doctors debrided his face, gave the girl morphine enough for both of them and told her to take care of him. Outside the war raged, and when his dreams started she woke him by stroking his hair and telling him stories about mermaids. She climbs up on the gurney with him when the sounds of battle draw closer. Suddenly, he hears the shelling and throws them both under a nearby table right before the room explodes around them.

Just a dream just a dream just a dream he repeats to himself.

It never felt like a dream. They knew they were going to die. They were young, and inexperienced, and bandaged, but it was the first time he'd ever touched a woman's breast. It was the first time he'd ever felt the inside of a woman's leg slide along the outside of his own. It was the first time he'd ever felt a woman's hand close around him. And so on.

But it never happened. Just a dream just a dream just a dream said doctors nurses Emma. The dream of a dying boy who regretted never being with a woman, that's all. The dreams morphine gives a brain overwhelmed by trauma and pain and horror.

Being with Odette cured him of the dream. She was so different from the dream girl. The way she closed her hand around him, the way she showed him how to touch her, it was all so different. He finally accepted that the girl under the table was just the product of an inexperienced boy's dying dreams.

The night Clara told him to unbutton her dress, the night she laid back across his lap with her serious eyes looking up at him as he pulled the front of her dress down, the night she awkwardly closed her hand around him for the first time and he realized the difference between a young woman with limited experience and someone experienced like Odette? The darkness sensed his nascent happiness, it understood the potential for confusion, and the dream started to wind back up.

In the moment, it didn't matter at all. Although he'd tried not to think about Clara in that way, for so long she'd starred in his dreams and fantasies. So for her breath to be warm against his bad cheek and her other arm wrapped around his neck and her bare chest pressed against his side as she clumsily tried to figure out his rhythm? It was more than enough.

Weeks later the darkness began to torture him. Clara, with her dress unbuttoned, laying in rubble under that table. The darkness began to blend memories of Clara, his flesh and blood girl he dreamed about for so long, with the dream girl whom he had only wished to be flesh and blood. Slowly his memories of being with Clara were tainted. The chickenpox scar under the left breast, Clara or the dream? (Clara. He had to check multiple times to be sure.)

Then the darkness increased its torture. In his dreams, he'd relive his kills. He shoots the d'Alessio boy and Clara is sitting on the cot behind the boy yelling at Richard to stop. He turns around in that Chicago apartment to put away his Enfield and Clara is sitting on the bed, her face cut like Pearl's. He's in a tree and Clara's standing in no man's land, watching him cut down Germans. She begs him not to pull the trigger, but he does anyway. She's still standing there when the Germans shell the tree, and she disappears into a blast of light. The darkness starts with kill one and moves on through his latest, kill sixty-four, and inserts Clara watching into all of them.

The darkness doesn't manage to ruin his time with Clara. When he's awake, he tells himself they are just dreams. Clara's real, and he's slowly began to trust that what's between them is real. He still worries that one day she'll realize what he is and will leave, but for now, she smiles and whispers she wants him. That's all that matters. He's no longer starving for someone to touch his shoulder or wondering if any woman will ever take his arm.

They are laying on a blanket in the woods, dressed, holding hands and he's enjoying the simplicity of just being with her when she props up on her elbow. From the look in her eyes he knew wasn't going to like what she was going to say.

"My friend Rose, whom I met in boarding school?" Clara asked him. He remembered Clara talking about her. Nucky had made her go to some fancy boarding school for two years ' _My father was under the impression that I was going to fit in with those people_ ' she'd said bitterly when she told him about it. Rose and Romola were her only two friends from the period.

"She's coming back to America because her sister is marrying a man from San Francisco. The wedding is going to be at their grandmother's cottage on Rhode Island. She's asked me to meet them in New York and then go up for the wedding. I'm going to be gone three weeks. I'll miss you terribly, but I need a break from Atlantic City."

A dim room. Clara looking unbelievably lovely. He couldn't even look right at her. Earlier, they had danced and he thought about kissing her (later, he would find out only the arrival of her uncle and aunt stopped her from kissing him). Gillian Darmody had whispered into his ear that Clara's friendship was charity and she was using him to avoid sex, and then Clara asked ' _You left home, you left Chicago, would you leave Atlantic City with me_?' and he told her no.

Part of him still thinks he should have grabbed her hand and taken her away from her father and Jimmy's war. She was so vulnerable, and he still believed that no one was thinking about her best interest (including him, because he knows his love is selfish. A better man would let her go and let her find someone capable of happiness). He can't let go of his fear that she's going to end up being collateral damage, and he can tell that the fighting is wearing on her. Just like it's wearing on Jimmy, but Jimmy at least gets to make choices. Clara's being held hostage by other people's poor decision making. Maybe they should all leave.

"You could come up for a couple of days, or even just to retrieve me. Rose's mother is darling, and she'd love to meet you," Clara said.

He shakes his head. These people thought Clara wasn't fancy enough-what hope did he have?

That's when the darkness realized it needn't only torture him while he slept. Instead, it could whisper while he was awake. It started by asking what did he think a Wisconsin farm boy was doing with an East Coast princess? How could he possibly provide for Clara? He'd seen her attempt at making a bed. How could he expect Clara Thompson to sweep a floor or light a stove? How could he keep her happy? Did he really think that Clara would have children with him? At some point, wasn't Clara going to want someone who could sit at a dinner table with her?

The night before she leaves, he can tell that she knows something is wrong. She's trying to figure it out. He doesn't want her worrying while she should be having fun with her friends. So he pushes out the whispers and just enjoys one last evening with her. When they get back to the Ritz, he kisses her hard and deep, like he fears its the last time he'll ever get to touch her.

"I'll be back the Sunday night before Memorial Day because my father asked I be at the dedication for the War Memorial."

He brushes a stray curl away from her forehead. "I'll. See you. There."

Clara's eyebrows knit together over her eyes, and she runs her hand across the right side of his face. "Promise?" she said seriously.

"I promise."

After Clara leaves, the whispering gets worse. And then the darkness starts seeking new victims. Tommy is playing on the floor, and he wants Richard to play with him. Angela and Jimmy are in the kitchen, and Richard's pretending he doesn't hear them fighting. Tommy has always seemed genuinely fond of him, in the same breezy manner as Jimmy and Clara where they never seemed bothered by the mask or his face. Was it being raised on the Boardwalk, with freak shows on every corner, that inoculated them against the horror of his face? In their minds, was he just another oddity like Alligator Boy? (Suddenly, Clara's voice cuts through the whispers and he can hear her say with perfect seriousness ' _Do you know how many freaks I've met? Countless. Do you know how many I've had feelings for? One. You_.'). He wants to play with the boy as Capone did, casually romping on the floor. He was once a boy who romped on the floor, so it shouldn't be difficult, but it is. He and Tommy finally fall into a game of soldier, which is when Tommy sits on the floor and puts his hands over his head.

The darkness smiles.

He's no longer standing in the sunroom; he's standing in a Philadelphia storefront, and the youngest d'Alessio is fumbling with a gun and putting his hands up. Richard has to wait for him to stop moving so he can ensure a clean kill.

Jimmy has to call his name several times to get him back to the sunroom.

The darkness is relentless. He dreams the same dream all night. For nights on end. When he aims, it's the d'Alessio boy. When he fires, it's Tommy.

Angela helps, but then Angela hurts. He hasn't even told Clara as much about Emma and why he left home as he ends up telling Angela. When he takes his mask, Angela's reaction isn't Jimmy and Clara's-a flash of recognition, he finally thinks. That's how Jimmy and Clara looked at him the first time they each saw him. Like they recognized something in him as something in themselves. Angela just looks sad for him, and then interested in the technicalities of his face as she sketches.

He loves Jimmy and Clara. Differently, of course, but still. But since the morning in New York, he's felt a kinship with Angela. They are quiet people in love with a prince and princess. ' _Suddenly they are Prince James and Princess Clara of the Boardwalk, and I wonder how Jimmy and I ever ended up together_ ' Angela whispered in his ear the night of Nucky's party, as they sat quietly on the sofa and Jimmy and Clara acted like they were, indeed, the beloved royal children of the Boardwalk as they spun around entertaining Nucky's guests.

She gives him the sketch, and he realizes he's eager to see what he looks like through someone else's eyes. It's not like he's going to have his picture made with his mask off. He only knows what he sees in the mirror, what he sees reflected in the few faces of the people who see him without the mask (Jimmy's ouch, Clara's rapid blink, Emily Schroeder's screams, Blaine's fear and disgust, Angela's calm sadness). Then he sees, and it feels like someone has reached up and ripped all the skin from his bones. He's just...exposed. All the pain and fear he feels is there on the paper. Is that what people see?

The darkness begins to roar. It's a constant onslaught of ' _you shouldn't exist_ ' and ' _monster_ ' and ' _broken_ ' and ' _heartless_ ' and ' _coward_ '. Then it starts using the voices of people he loves. His mother whispers that she despairs of his lack of integrity. His father tells him a man is nothing without honor. Emma says he's a coward. Jimmy yells they both should have died in the trench. Angela looks at him and quietly calls him a freak. And Clara calls him a monster over, and over, and over, and over.

In this middle of this, the Commodore has a stroke. It's not that he likes or trusts the Commodore (' _I despise him, and I don't trust him...please be careful...the Commodore... there's no limit to his depravity_ ' Clara had whispered as they walked across the Boardwalk arm in arm), but things are worse once he's out of commission. Gillian Darmody starts sitting in on meetings, and Richard knows whatever she's whispering into Jimmy's ear isn't helping anything.

He catches Sheriff Thompson looking at him. It was Clara's Uncle Eli who walked in on them at Babette's before the ball began. They weren't doing anything, but he knows that they probably didn't look innocent either. But Eli never said anything, and Clara said once that Eli had a better idea of who she was as a person than her own father did. Eli certainly seems to understand the dark undercurrents of Jimmy's family better than he does.

Jimmy is a good leader, Richard believes, but he's better with other people guiding the way. Richard would help, helps where he can, but this mission is so muddled he doesn't understand what the parameters for victory are. Every day is a new problem, a new decision, a new caper, but the old problems, the old decisions, the old capers are never resolved. Why the butcher, he wanted to ask Jimmy. The man was obviously dangerous and needed careful handling. Why add an extra level of complexity?

And slowly, the darkness reveals its plan. The woods. His gun. Saving Clara from the pain he's destined to cause her. Saving himself from another day of agony disguised as life. He means to do it while she's safe with her friends, but the chaos of work pushes back his timeline. He decides that's better. The thought of Jimmy going to Rhode Island to tell her, of Clara crying on a train, it's too much. If she's back in Atlantic City, she and Jimmy will have each other. There's a rightness on doing it Memorial Day, and both Jimmy and Clara will be distracted with their civic duties until its too late. And then soon, he'll just be a bad memory.

He doesn't drive his car. He can't, it's so wrapped up with memories of being happy with Clara. Instead, he signs the pink slip over to her and tells Jimmy in the same note that tells him where he's hidden his money and how to send it to Emma. His laundry is done, and his room is clean. It won't be much work to dispose of his few worldly goods.

He wants to enjoy his last hours. The woods remind of him Plover, but they also remind him of stargazing with Clara. He tries to eat, but he's tired of every bite hurting. He finally lays back, and he tries to only think of happy things. The sun on the entirety of his face, and freedom from the mask which he's carefully placed at his side. Clara. Emma. His mother. Sampson. The darkness whispers how they'll all be better of without him. He twists the gun in his hands, and slowly lowers the barrel into his mouth. The metallic taste makes him think of blood, and that's right for a man who has spilled so much of it, he thinks. His arms are long, but he still has to readjust to get the proper grip. He has to lower the barrel down into his throat, which causes his gag reflex to kick in.

' _Do you know what I've never understood? Why wasn't I enough?_ '

No, Clara, no, he thinks. You were enough for me. You were enough for your mother. It's our demons that won't be satiated, and you are better off without our darkness. 

Suddenly, he hears Sampson's wet, heavy breaths and smells the unforgettable scent of dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was an incredibly difficult chapter to write, and difficult to read. The suicide attempt in the show floored me, and working out how to get Richard in that same place while he and Clara are moving forward seemed especially tricky. But of course, love doesn't conquer all and just because he loves Clara it doesn't mean Richard doesn't have very real struggles with PTSD and anxiety. However, what he doesn't have is a modern vocabulary or understanding of his issues (nor does anyone in his life), so the depiction here tried to take that into account.


	18. Remembrance Part One-May, 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara has returned to Atlantic City. She quickly learns something about her father, and her worry for Richard and Jimmy grows.

**Memorial Day 1921**

"Come say hello to our guests," Nucky instructed when Clara came out of her hallway. Dressed in a pale pink silk dress covered in white beaded embroidery, with white crocheted gloves, her best string of pearls, a white picture hat, stockings, and shoes, she looked pristine. She finally looked like his daughter, for the first time in a long time, he thought.

Getting her out of Atlantic City and away with her boarding school friends-her society friends-for Dorothy Grenville's wedding was obviously the correct course of action, he reflected. He hoped she would tell him later that she met a young man during her three weeks in Newport. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright, so he had hope. It was past time for Clara to marry and leave behind her childish dependence on James. He wanted her settled, and with everything going on he'd be happier if she settled down away from the Boardwalk.

"Ah, Attorney General Henry Daugherty. We met in Chicago," Clara said.

Nucky watched her charm Daugherty and Jess Smith. It appeared effortless. Good, he thought, it was past time she started behaving like herself again.

"Are we honoring any of your friends today, Miss Thompson?" Daugherty asked in the car as they drove to the Memorial.

"A boy I went to school with was killed at Argonne," Clara said simply.

"Well, we certainly appreciate the sacrifices all those fine young men made."

Clara nodded, and Nucky noticed her face clouded over. "Two of my closest friends were injured-seriously injured-during the war. Neither would have survived without modern field medicine, but..."

It took all of Nucky's self-control not to roll his eyes. Jesus Christ, was she incapable of letting James go for one second? "Harry, let me tell you about the golf course we're going to be playing today," Nucky cut in.

Owen pulled up to the Memorial, but Nucky grabbed Clara's wrist before she could exit the car. "At your age, do I really have to remind you how to speak to our guests?" he hissed at her from between gritted teeth when the other two men got out. "No one wants to hear about injured soldiers."

Clara's eyes flashed. "My apologies, I don't know what I was thinking, speaking about veterans on Memorial Day."

When the hell had she become so endlessly infuriating, he wondered. "Who is the other soldier that was injured?"

"Richard."

"Do I know him?" Nucky asked, wondering if somehow Clara had attracted some broken former Army officer at the wedding. At this point, a damaged society boy was fine, he thought. Anything to get her away from James.

"Harrow?" Clara responded in a tone of voice that made it clear she couldn't believe he needed to ask, for what other Richard could she possibly be speaking about.

Nucky fought to control his temper. James was ridiculous enough. He'd been fine for a childhood friend, and if James had finished Princeton, met Clara's Bryn Mawr classmates, and they had both gone on to marry well he would have been happy for their friendship to continue. Hell, he wasn't even opposed to the Commodore's idea of marrying them off to each other if James had stuck to Nucky's plan for him. But now James was his enemy, and it was James's damn fault he was spending Memorial Day with Harry fucking Daughtery. But insisting Richard Harrow was her friend, oh no, that wasn't enough for Clara, insisting he was one of her closest friends when the freakshow sided with James?

She had gone too far. It was time to bring Clara back under control.

"Have you taken complete leave of your senses? He was your bodyguard, back when he worked for me. You wanted to be friendly to some maimed remnant of a man, fine. But he works for my enemy, Clara, and you best remember whose daughter you are. This is not a story with a happy ending for the vanquished."

Clara refused to break eye contact with her father, but inside she was cringing. She had never, in her life, seen her father as furious as he was at this moment. However, as her heart banged in her chest and her breath caught she realized she was equally furious. He was their father, Jimmy's as much as hers, really, and he had done nothing to help Jimmy when he found out about Gillian. And not once, not once, had she heard Nucky take responsibility for Gillian, which was an act so incredibly awful she couldn't even let herself think about it. Clara felt her own reserve crack under the force of her fury. "Oh, this war, that started because you refused to take responsibility for whoring out a little girl..."

Nucky leaned forward. His eyes were even larger in his face than usual, and he was breathing heavily. Her father had never so much had spanked her. He had raged, he had screamed, he once locked her in her room for two weeks (only allowing Eddie to unlock the door to bring her trays), he regularly went long periods without speaking to her when she displeased him, but he had never once hit her. At that moment, as she leaned back against the car upholstery and felt the poreless leather against her arms, she honestly thought he was going to strike her. Her own temper flared, and she refused to back down.

He opened the door and got out, taking large gulps of air in an attempt to calm himself. Owen Sleater was looking at him with concern. "Go check the stage," he snapped at Sleater. If Clara was foolish enough to consider Harrow one of her closest friends, God only knew what trouble she could get into with Sleater, for all of her air of injured innocence when he spoke to her about it at Margaret's a couple of months ago. He'd warn Sleater to stay the hell away from her. He'd be damned if the daughter he spent so much money raising ended up dallying with an Irish Revolutionary, or, God forbid, married to someone so completely undesirable.

Clara sat in the Rolls-Royce for a few moments so she could calm down enough to join the crowd. Her hands were shaking, still, as her mind raced. She hadn't wanted her father to go to prison when the Commodore's plan began to unfold. She'd worried from the beginning about the impact the Rothsteins and Capones of the world were going to have on this stupid feud, but sitting in the Rolls she realized she had badly underestimated her father. For the first time, she was scared about what would happen if Jimmy lost. Her father, she now saw, would be merciless in punishing Jimmy's treason, and she feared she'd just accidentally drawn a target on Richard's back.

When she exited the car she took big gulps of the salty air in an attempt to calm down and still her racing heart. She looked through the crowd, searching for a glimpse of a familiar tall, slim figure in a newsboy cap. Her fingers smoothed her skirt repeatedly, taking momentary comfort in tracing the raised beadwork. Richard had worried her badly before she left, so much so she almost canceled her trip. That kiss. He never kissed her like that with the mask on. Her knees had almost buckled, and the way he looked at her when he pulled away, like he was memorizing her face, troubled her. Then he promised he'd see her here, and Richard kept his promises, so she told herself it was just that he was going to miss her.

After all, she'd missed him. It was odd to go so long without seeing him or talking to him. There were nights as she watched her friends happy with their husbands and partners where her longing for him was almost unbearable. She knew when she saw him she'll want to throw herself in his arms, but even just brushing her fingers against his sounded amazing.

She pushed away the thought that she'd taken extra time to get ready this morning because she'd put in her dutch cap, in the hopes they'd have the whole day together. After all, Mrs.Siddons left for Maine on Friday, so Richard's cottage was no longer off-limits.

"Hey, Dollface. You all right?"Eli asked. He'd seen his brother leave the Rolls-Royce looking like he was about to commit murder, and then Clara exit the car a few minutes later looking shaken.

"Just had a lovely conversation with Father."

Eli didn't miss that his niece's eyes never stopped moving through the crowd. "I haven't seen Harrow," he said, not bothering to hide his amusement. "He looked even more like a kicked puppy than he usually does while you were gone, though."

He's quiet for a moment. "Your father isn't going to take the news of you and Harrow well."

Clara turned to her uncle, and he was taken back by the fear in her eyes. "No, I worry what he'll try and do to Richard when he finds out. It's why I've tried to keep it a secret."

"Well, I'm worried about you, Dollface. If you need to, you can always come to my house and stay with us."

Nucky was talking to the Yacht Club set (those fucking traitors) when he saw Clara talking with Eli. Suddenly she leaned over and kissed her uncle on the cheek. Fury raged within him again. Was she trying to infuriate him?

He kept an eye on the little traitoress as she moved around the crowd, making small talk with people, and finally joining up with, of course, the fucking Darmodys. James's little boy climbed on her like she was a familiar playmate.

"Do you know where Richard is?" Clara asked Jimmy as they walked toward their seats. "He promised to be here today."

"For fucks sake, Clara, maybe he just didn't feel like coming."

Clara felt her carefully maintained reserve crack further.

"Jesus, Jimmy, forgive me for thinking that, since in theory, you are friends with both of us you might give a care. I won't make that mistake again. As far as I know, you've sent him somewhere and lost track of what's happening," she snapped back with venom in her voice.

Jimmy rolled his eyes, but internally he pushed down his own worry.

Angela enjoyed the beautiful day and the chance to be with Jimmy without any threat that Gillian was going to waltz in. She was equally happy to see Clara, who was in full princess regalia. However, she picked up on the tension between Jimmy and Clara. Tension, she was sure, no one would ever explain to her. She didn't miss Nucky's glares over at them; unlike the day he cut her dead on the Boardwalk his fury seemed to be directed equally at Jimmy and Clara. Clara kept turning around.

"I know, I thought Richard would be here as well," Angela whispered.

"I'm that obvious, aren't I? I haven't seen him in three weeks, I've missed him madly, and he worried me terribly the night before I left. He's been okay, though?"

Angela didn't answer immediately, which made the hairs on the back of Clara's neck rise.

"I know he missed you," Angela said, not wanting to tell Clara she had also worried over Richard the last week. The day in the sunroom when he had been playing with Tommy and then he was just so clearly gone had been scary. It had taken Jimmy several attempts to get him back.

Clara forced her attention up to the stage when her father began to speak. To everyone else, he looked like Nucky Thompson, genial County Treasurer. She could see beneath, though, and he was still furious, even as he extolled the virtues of Atlantic City. The way he pronounced the Commodore "this city's doting father" sent chills down her spine. Something's coming, something's coming her nerves whispered to her as she fought the desire to start twisting her hair.

"...on a young man who can speak more directly to the ideals of sacrifice, service, and loyalty more than I ever could."

She caught Jimmy's eye around Angela. Angela thought this was an honor; she and Jimmy recognized it for it truly was. A gauntlet. Clara caught that Jimmy's limp was worse than usual; damn it, she thought, he's nervous. She kept forgetting to breathe as he took the podium.

Do well, she prayed. Show him you can do this, she thought.

He started to falter and she wrinkled her skirt in her hands. Then he found his voice, and Clara pushed down her smile. Her father's face noticeably-to her at least-fell.

Matchpoint Jimmy, Clara thought with venom.

Clara stayed back so Angela and Tommy could kiss Jimmy in congratulations.

"Please know I've never been prouder of you, and that includes the time you convinced the seventh grade that Father O'Connor was having a secret affair with Sister Mary Agnes," Clara told him with a smile when Angela and Tommy wandered away. "I still think you are an idiot, but Father needs to know he's not the only person who can play the game."

"Thanks, and thanks," Jimmy said drily. "And look, I'm sure Richard just didn't want to deal with all this. I know he missed you, I'm sure he'll find you later."

Clara nodded, but she wasn't reassured. It made her feel like a child, but he had promised. Something must have happened for him to break that promise.

"Look, Nucky is enjoying the day with the new us," Jimmy motioned with his jaw, and she saw Margaret and the children had arrived at some point and were standing with her father. He was playing the doting father to the hilt.

"Poor little things," Clara said with feeling, "it's all ice cream and ponies when you are small and malleable, but when you grow up..."

"Forced marriages and feuds?" Jimmy said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

Clara nodded. "Something like that, for sure."


	19. Remembrance Part Two-May, 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard goes to see Clara, they discuss forbidden topics, and move their relationship to the next level.  
> SMUT WARNING.

**Memorial Day Night**

Music drifted out from Clara's room, a soft sound almost drowned out by the cacophony of the party going on beyond the hall door. The fact no one realized he still had the key to Clara's hall made Richard worry about how lax security had become in the suite.

He was there because Jimmy had told him, when they were done with the job, that Clara had been frantically looking for him all day. ' _I told you about hurting her, Rich_ ' Jimmy had said in a sardonic voice, but at the same time, Richard heard an edge. He'd asked Jimmy how. He meant, how could do the things he did and then go to her? Jimmy understood and pointed out he was going home to Angela and Tommy.

Richard didn't have an answer. He just didn't know how he could do these things and then go to Clara.

' _Clara loves you, at least in part, because she thinks you actually see her and not the Princess of the Ritz. If nothing else, you should go talk to her. You're a soldier, but you don't have to be just a soldier. And Clara? Behind that princess facade? She’s a bruiser._ '

Richard stood outside her door for as long as he dared before he knocked. He didn't like the idea of her being frantic with worry over him. He wasn't worth it.

"Yes?" Clara asked sleepily from behind the door, suspicion evident in her voice.

"It's. Richard. Harrow."

"Richard!" Clara had the door open and her arms around him before he could react. She pressed in for a tight hug. His head fell to her shoulder, and he smelled the ocean salt and orange smell of her. He didn't think he'd ever feel Clara's weight pressed against him or smell her again. His hands lifted, but he couldn't make them go around her.

Clara realized he wasn't responding and leaned back to look at him. He looked...gone. His mask had marks all over it. His good eye looked less lively than the painted one. His head hung on his shoulders like his neck could no longer bear the weight.

“Richard?” she asked, notes of fear creeping into her voice. He lifted his head to look at her, but she could see that it took effort. “What's wrong?”

She was wearing the pajamas she'd been wearing almost a year ago when Jimmy sent him to her room to make sure she was okay after the d'Allessios tried to kill Nucky on the Boardwalk, he noticed. Just like that night, the right strap had fallen off her shoulder. But now he could just reach over and use his fingertips to push the strap back up onto her shoulder. He could put his hand on her face and she'd lean up and kiss him. He could tell her that everything felt impossibly dark and the nightmares kept playing behind his eyes even when he was awake and he knew she would pour herself over him and try and share her warmth and light with his cold and shadowed soul.

Beyond her hall, rich men were having women. Women whose names they probably didn't know, that they certainly didn't care about, whom they would never think about again, and that they only appreciated in the same way Richard appreciated a piece of cheese when he was hungry.

Anger flamed inside him. He loved Clara. The fact that a few months ago she stood in front of him and kissed him still felt unreal. That first night, when her feet were on top of his and he fell asleep with her breath on his cheek, was one of the best things that had ever happened to him. So why must he give up what he held dear?

It was because he loved her, he knew. He couldn't bear to poison her with his darkness.

“I don’t know,” he responded with a click.

He stared at her, she thought, like he was waiting for her to understand what he wasn’t saying. She stared back. The emptiness in his face terrified her. She looked again at the bitten mask, at his less than perfectly pressed clothing. He looked like he had tramped through the woods. A sudden fear clenched her heart.

She herded him into her room, and then shut the door. One hand reached out and touched the back his head, feeling the way the silky strands dropped over the back of his collar. "Your hair, Richard," she said in a voice that was soft and scared and horrified all at the same time. "Jimmy's hair is always a mess, but yours... yours is always so neat. But it's so long. When did you last visit the barber?"

He didn't answer. He looked at her clean hand laying against his chest. Suddenly, he was afraid that evidence of what he did, of what he is, remained on his hands. "I need. To. Wash my hands."

Clara gestured towards her bathroom and walked out to the balcony. It was a perfect May night, and she breathed in the warm salty air. Summer, she thought, she could smell the beginning of summer. Even at this late hour she could still hear the first summer visitors enjoying the Boardwalk. She heard Richard’s footfall behind her. "You promised you'd see me at the Dedication. I was worried when you didn't come because you aren't a person who breaks his promises."

He didn't answer, so she turned to face him. Worry was etched on her face. "Richard, please. I don't understand what's wrong. I thought things were lovely between us. I missed you while I was gone. I looked forward to seeing you from the moment I got off the train. What happened?"

Watching him try and form the words was painful. "I'll poison you."

Clara took a ragged breath and closed her eyes. She'd always known this conversation had to be part of their story, but she still wasn't sure how to handle it. "Richard, that's not true."

There was poison, she thought. It was infecting everything in her world. I will not let destroy Richard, she thought furiously. I will not let it destroy us.

"Mmm. You don't know. What I am." He still wouldn't look at her, and Clara's fury, which ebbed and flowed all day, began to rise once more.

"You are the one person I never expected to treat me like some little dumb Dora. I told you the day you went to Philadelphia. I am the daughter of this house. I know what you were told to do. You killed that...boy." Clara almost had to turn away from the look of pain on Richard's face when she said it, but she knew the way forward was through.

"His brother. But Richard, it was on my father's order. Jimmy slit the throat of another brother; I'm not which of you or if someone else killed the fourth d'Alessio. Jimmy asked you to kill the man who cut that girl in Chicago he cared..."

"Ask me. What I did. Tonight." Richard said in a voice much harsher than his typical voice. He looked straight at her. She could see fear and pain in his good eye.

"Okay," Clara asked, afraid but unwilling to show it."What did you do tonight?"

Richard forced himself to look her in the face as he said it, although he knew it would be the last time Clara ever looked at him without revulsion.

"I scalped. An. Old man."

Clara flinched. "Did you rob a stagecoach as well? Why in God's..." Before she could finish the thought, her own voice saying ' _This one old man-I always thought he was horrid-he started talking about how much money he made off the war, and I swear I considered sliding my steak knife between his ribs_ ' as she stood in the Natural History Museum with Richard came back to her. No, she thought, no. And then, she cracked.

"Please, please tell me that Jimmy didn't have you scalp Jackson Parkhurst."

He heard the panic and despair in her voice. "He did."

Her face fell, and Richard hung his head.

Was Jimmy trying to lose to her father? Was he fucking determined to take Richard down with him? Clara's mind raced so quickly she couldn't control the words coming out of her mouth.

"Are you both fucking idiots? The man's a canker sore on the soul of humanity, but what the hell is Jimmy thinking? Those Yacht Club men, he needs their political clout and, more importantly, he needs their money if he has any hope of pulling off his precious coup against my father."

She wasn't understanding, it was too much, he thought. The pain of having to tell her again was almost unbearable. "Clara. I scalped. Him."

"Yes, thank you, I understood the first time. What I don't understand is why the hell Jimmy would think was a good play. Is he incapable of thinking more than one step ahead at a time? I'd say he's playing checkers while my father is playing chess, but at this point, he's apparently playing hopscotch! And I swear to god I'm going over and confiscating Tommy's cowboy and Indian toys first thing tomorrow. Obviously they don't have a good impact on the male psyche."

She still doesn't understand what I mean, Richard thought. "Parkhurst." He had to swallow several times. "Died."

"My God, you think me so unintelligent that I can't decipher that an old man will die if you cut off his scalp?"

Richard stared at her, unable to answer.

Clara's fury boiled over.

"What? You think me some doe-eyed innocent? That I'm a paper doll from your book who will crumble when confronted by the reality of Atlantic City? This is my world, Wisconsin. You just joined up; I was born into this quagmire. My father was a corrupt lying bastard before he decided that the onset of Prohibition was the perfect time to play criminal kingpin. And why the passage of the Volstead Act made Jimmy think he was the second coming of the Dolan Brothers is beyond my understanding.

"But do you know want to know what actually horrifies me? My father is playing this game like a fucking adult-I spent the morning under strict orders to charm the Attorney General-while you and Jimmy are acting like two little boys playing Indians in the woods. Do you know what happened to the Sioux when they encountered corrupt bastards with shaky moral codes? Well, Jackson Parkhurst would have told us in horrifying detail if you hadn't scalped him earlier tonight."

They stared at each other. Clara's eyes were bright and wild, Richard's was overwhelmed.

Clara ran her hands along the railing behind her, trying to calm down. "Since you haven't bothered to ask, let me tell you how my trip was. I loved being with Rose and Dorothy. I loved seeing their parents. But it struck me how different our lives are now. I lie awake at night and think about how my father won the Commodore's patronage. I worried about my father going to prison, but today I got a glimpse of just how angry my father is, and now I'm terrified that Jimmy will lose this stupid war. There are worse things than prison." Clara closed her eyes. I didn’t love, she thought, Rose’s incessant need to talk about the final days of the war. She had finally made her peace and was moving forward; ripping off the still healing scabs was painful and seemed pointless, but it gave her additional resolve to fix this tonight.

"That's why. I can't. Be with you," he growled softly, looking at the ground.

"You haven't listened to anything I've said." Clara walked towards him. "If you don't want me, if you don't want to be with me, okay. If you want to go back to Wisconsin and leave us all to our craziness, that's okay, too. Sometimes I think that's what you should do.” It would break my heart, she thinks.

"But I'm in this, Richard. This is my father, this is my family, this is my history, and at the moment it's my reality. So it's not a matter of your saving me if you end things with me. It's a matter of if I go through this alone, or if I go through this with the man I love."

He looked up at her, then.

Her voice was unsteady, and she twirled the end of her braid nervously. "I love you, you idiot. You aren't hiding any deep dark secrets from me. I worked for the War Department. I know what you did. I know..."

Richard took her hand and ran his thumb across the top. He thought of the pink-cheeked girl scared to realize she was in a bordello. Almost a year ago, he thought. She seemed like a daydream come to life, and now she stood in front of him and declared her love. She thought she knew him.

He took a deep breath. He couldn’t let Clara declare her love thinking she knew him when she didn’t. "Not just the war. Or on your father's order. Or Jimmy's. I've done other things. Mmm. I was in Chicago. I needed money. I had been at. A veteran's meeting..."

Dear god, Clara thought. For a moment she wanted to just run. Run away from all of it. Then she was sorry she couldn't go back in time, to that day in Chicago, and take Richard by the hand and just go. _You tried that_ , a voice in her head whispered. _You weren't enough to make him leave. You'll never be enough for him, either._

"I did it. I prayed it. Was the right thing. But it probably wasn't."

Clara put her hands against his face, warm flesh under her left hand and flesh and cold metal under her right. He looked so vulnerable that it twisted her heart; she knew that no matter what happened that to her he'd always be a boy broken by the war, the man who saved her life, the only person who saw her as a whole person. The War Department, some random bastard, her father, Jimmy, in the end, they were all the same by her reckoning. "So another corrupt bastard found out about what you did in the war and you used you for their own ends. That doesn't change anything, not for me, anyway."

"Then why. Did you. Make fun of me?" He asked, and again she heard the pain in his voice.

"What?" Clara looked at him, completely lost. "Oh, your book. I wasn't making fun of you, Richard. Just....pointing out I'm not picture perfect. I'm real, I love you in part because you always treated me like a complex person."

"How did. You know."

Clara sighed and moved her hands to his shoulders. "The night after you left when...well, to go to Philadelphia. I missed you. I was worried about you. I went in your room-I just meant to sit on your bed for a minute, I just wanted to feel close to you-and something struck my leg. It was a book. I didn't understand what it was, at first. I thought you were just being ridiculously neat."

He's silent, and he won't look at her again.

"It's beautiful, you know that, right? It was like looking at one of Angela's paintings."

"No one was. Supposed to see." He paused, thinking about all the things she probably saw. "Did you see. Me?"

"Yes. You were very handsome, but I knew that already, didn't I?"

He felt...stripped bare, he thought. He never expected to see the stars shining over the night, nor have every one from random hunters to Jimmy tell him he had to actually live. He never expected to go to Clara and tell her what he did, and for her concern to be over the ramifications of the act, instead of the horror of it. He worried all the time that no one was protecting Clara, and now he knew he was one of the people failing to protect her from the world they lived in.

Clara knew all of it, and she had seen his book. She had seen it back in November. She was still here.

The emotional upheaval of the day finally broke him. He reached for her, almost without thinking, and slid along the wall of her balcony until he was on the floor and she was sitting sideways in his lap.

Clara's warmth came through the fabric of his shirt as she nestled against him, the silk and lace of her pajama top loosely rubbing against his forearm. The sound of the surf relentlessly beating against the shore beneath them obliterated almost all other sounds, but he could hear the soft sound of her breathing underneath it. He let his head fall against hers. Oranges. Always oranges. And underneath the smell of oranges and oceans, he could smell the slight sweetness of her skin. His arm tightened against her unconsciously. Everyone told him to live, to want. Suddenly he felt his ever-present longing for Clara shift to something more elemental, to sheer hunger.

The fog lifted, the darkness receded, and he wanted.

Some instinct made Clara raise her head. He cupped her head in one hand and traced the soft planes of her face with the other. Soon his hand was drifting down her neck, and his other hand was tracing down her side, stopping only to knead the outside of her hip. Clara's emotions had been running at a fever pitch all day, and now she felt herself balancing on a precipice.

It took all his restraint not to pull her top off as they sat on the balcony. Suddenly the reality of his day crashed back over him. He wanted her, but not with every sin and every darkness of the day still on him.

It was a difficult question to ask. "Can I. Mm. Use your shower?" He didn't make eye contact.

Clara blinked, trying to decipher what was behind the question and what it meant. "Of course. There's a clean towel hanging on the door."

Richard extracted his various limbs and made his way to her bathroom. Clara waited until she heard the water run for a moment, and then dashed into her bedroom. She went straight for the hollowed-out book where she hid her dutch cap when she took it out a couple of hours earlier after she failed to find Richard. She cast a nervous look at the bathroom door, but the water was still running. Sliding her pajama pants down, she tried to be as efficient as possible. She pulled them back up, and quickly realized she had no way to wash her hands. Finally, she settled for taking her carafe of water to the balcony and pouring some over her hands.

The warm water was beating down on his shoulders, and he tried to imagine it carrying away all the dirt and darkness from the day. Clara had a plethora of products balanced around the edge of the tub. A safety razor was balanced precariously on top of the soap dish (he moved it because he could see it falling and her stepping on it). Mulsified Cocoanut Oil Shampoo sat next to a bar of orange soap and another bar of Ponds soap. He didn't know why she needed two bars, or which he should use. The orange soap would make him smell like Clara, so he started to reach for the other. He realized that if the rest of the night went as planned, he was going to smell more like Clara than just her soap. The realization made him knock the razor to the floor, where he promptly stepped on it.

His next decision was what the hell to leave the bathroom wearing. His choices were his own clothes, Clara's kimono, or a towel. He couldn't bear to put his clothes back on, he couldn't even imagine how ridiculous he would look in her robe, so he wrapped the towel around his hips and put his mask on.

Clara was standing by her bed. Her eyes automatically went to him when he opened the door, and her breath hitched. In their times together before, when they'd done ' _other things_ ' as she termed it, they'd been in the car or under a blanket. She'd never actually seen him undressed; they’d unbuttoned what needed to be unbuttoned and slid hands under clothing, mostly. Now she could see the muscles that ran from his shoulders down his arms, the long slim planes of his chest and stomach, and the line of hair that started at his naval and ran under the towel. She swallowed.

"I wasn't sure if I should get in bed, and if I did if I should get under the covers, or if since we are in an actual bed the covers will just get in our way..." She didn't tell him that she'd been standing there for at least five minutes trying to decide.

Although he was still standing a little way away he reached forward and curled her hands into his. "Mmm. Are you. Scared?"

Clara shook her head. They stood there until she couldn't take it anymore. "Can you take off the mask?"

He didn't know why he put it back on after the shower. Fear of losing it again, he guessed. He carefully placed it on her bedside table and saw for the first time the damage the dog-the one for one crazy moment he thought was Sampson-did when it grabbed the mask.

Clara reached forward and ran her hand across his back. He turned to her and toyed with the edge of her pajama top. Clara took a deep breath and lifted her arms.

Richard understood. He untied the sash at her waist and then crumpled the silk and lace, and took a moment before he lifted the top off her. She had nothing on underneath. Her pajama top was still in his hands, and he started running his hands across the silk in an attempt to calm down. After a moment, he dropped it and ran his fingertips under the swell of her left breast, where the skin was soft and thin and he could feel the pitted indention of her chicken pox scar. Clara was softly running her fingers along his shoulders and then started trailing them down his chest. Every touch was making him harder. He let his hands cup her breasts and heard her sharp intake of breath.

All Clara was aware of was the feeling of his hands running over her chest when his mouth found hers. Her knees felt like they were about to buckle, but some part of her registered that he tasted like a campfire. Meaty, salty, smoky, and even the trace of something metallic. For a moment she stopped kissing, and started to ask. But no, she thought. She couldn’t bear to speak another word, even thinking was asking too much. She just wanted to feel, so she wrapped her arms around his back and started pulling him towards her bed, never letting their mouths separate for a moment. They fell sideways on the bed in a messy tangle of arms and legs.

Usually, when they kissed, Clara tried to be careful and mindful of the damage to the left side of his mouth. The last thing she wanted to do was cause him more pain. Tonight, though, she was drowning in the kiss and forgot to be careful. As her tongue ran across the inside of his lip she felt the slight calloused ridge caused by the mask. She kept going, following the disappearance of healthy lip into the dip down and then the feeling of thin damaged flesh spider-webbed with tiny scars.

He stopped moving. His breathing changed.

"Are you okay?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he moved his mouth to her neck and started working his way down her body. Clara lay there, feeling the particular way he used his mouth on her. Lick. Graze of teeth. Press of lips. Lick. Graze of teeth. Press of lips. With each motion, his mustache brushed against her skin and she felt his stubble snag across her skin. Richard’s breathing was heavy, and there was the sound of panting. Oh, she realized, that’s me. Within seconds, she was lost in a haze of sensation.

Richard looked up at her. Clara’s face was flushed, her pupils were so large he could barely make out a ring of blue, and her mouth was open and she was breathing heavily. She also was about to fall off the bed, which they were still lying across sideways. He put his arms around her and flipped them over so she was lying back against the pillows.

Clara giggled against his shoulder, and then remembered how he pulled away form their kiss. “Did I hurt you? I just...”

He looked down, realized he was staring at her chest, but didn’t know how to meet her eyes, so he stared at her jaw. “No. Mmm. But you don’t need to...”

Leaning back against her pillows, she took a moment to look at him in the moonlight. His hair was completely disheveled, and his face was flushed. He was staring at her neck. “Okay. I don’t want to hurt you. I do want to kiss you...freely.”

That was when she realized the towel had fallen away and she was looking at all him. She reached out and felt him shudder in response. All of their time spent stargazing meant she was far more confident than she had been the first night.

He wanted to sink down into the feeling of her hand, but he wanted her more. Just as he started to push her hand away, he had a dreadful realization.

He hadn’t expected to live. He thought he’d never see Clara again. The condoms he had procured lay in a drawer in his room.

“Clara. Mmm. I don’t have.” He was struggling to speak, but after a second she understood.

She blushed, and thought how ridiculous the heat she felt in her cheeks was. “It’s okay. I do. I, um, I have a device in.” She finally dared to look at him, and they stared at each other for a moment, realizing what was next. They both leaned in and let their mouths join again.

Even as his hand slid down her stomach and between her legs he kept kissing her, even as the fizzy feeling of the night crashed into something else that finally left her shaking and breathless.

She was still trying to catch her breath when she felt him smooth her hair off her face.

“Mmm. We. Don’t...”

Oh no, none of that, she thought. “I want to, though,” she said softly as she slid her legs around him.

He had to take several calming breaths. It took all of his self-control to enter her slowly, and he watched her face to make sure she was okay. After what felt like an eternity but was less than a minute he felt her shift underneath him. Her chest rubbed against his as he started trying to find a rhythm, and Clara’s hands were running up and down his back. It felt like she was wrapped around every part of her. He wanted it to last forever, but he knew tonight every second was a struggle. After another eternity, or few minutes, he realized Clara had gone still and was holding her breath.

He put his mouth on her ear and struggled for a moment before he was able to growl, “Breathe.”

She fell apart around him and he followed quickly behind.

They lay tangled in her bed, both out of breath and spent. Richard tried to make sense of a day that was so endlessly horrible but then ended with Clara telling him she loved him and then...this. He tried to think through everything, to make sure he hadn’t done anything to harm her.

‘ _I love you, you idiot._ ’

He never answered her, and his stomach was filled with gnawing anxiety. His hands moved nervously, but they were currently wrapped around Clara, so she looked up at him questioningly. He took a deep breath.

“I love you,” he finally rasped out.

Clara breathed in. Their sweat-soaked skin lay entangled with each other, her room smelled like them, and the only sound she could hear was the ocean and their ragged breathing. He didn’t have to say it just because she did, she thought. But then she looked at his face, at his anxious expression, and she thought, maybe he’s telling the truth.

She smiled, and whispered, “Well, it’s official. We are the first two people to ever go to bed together on the eighth floor of the Ritz-Carlton because they love each other.”


	20. Give Them What They Want-May 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara visits with various people.

Richard froze with indecision as he felt the first tendrils of panic set in. He never thought he would see this day, and yet he was waking up in Clara’s bed as the first light of day streamed through the balcony door. Clara stretched across his left side, a dizzying combination of silky skin and soft flesh and sharp bones, the bad side of his face buried in her hair. There were many things not right. He had drooled so much that her hair and forehead were wet, and he felt the bite of shame. The arm underneath Clara had pins and needles. He really shouldn’t be in her bed as the day began.

Last night felt a dream. Yet he was still here, and she was still with him. He had more than he ever thought he would. The problem was, he wanted more. And he wanted it now.

Clara stirred against him. He was still here, she thought, their skin warm and damp where it pressed against each other. Part of her had been certain that when she woke up he would be gone. She stretched, feeling soreness in new places. Her mouth was so dry it felt like her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Oh goodness, if her mouth felt like that what did he feel like?

“Is the carafe or the glass better for you?” Clara asked as she unpeeled herself from him and leaned over to her nightstand.

“Mmm, I don’t need...”

“I think the time for modesty between us has passed since we are, you know...” she gestured to their utter nakedness. 

He turned red. 

“The carafe. Please.”

They both turned away while they drank. Clara fell back on her pillow, her mind trying to work out the various puzzles of her life.

Richard’s hand shyly traced up her arm. “Are you. Okay?”

Clara rolled over so she was looking at him and smiled as she ran a fingertip down his chest. “Sad that we only have thirty minutes left before you should leave. I figure you’ll need, what, ten minutes to get ready?”

As he pulled her closer, he thought he had always been a very efficient person. They could accomplish much in twenty minutes.

* * *

Clara also considered herself an efficient person, but she had never showered so thoroughly in such a short amount of time. Last night, before Richard knocked on her door, she’d sat on her balcony and listened to the sounds of summer beginning. As an Atlantic City girl she understood in her bones the importance of summer; Clara also felt the importance of this particular summer. After all, she thought, Memorial Day had certainly changed her life, hadn't it?

For so long the fight between Jimmy and her father left her sick and scared, yet she had fully believed that she wouldn’t have to make a choice, wouldn’t have to act. The last twenty-four hours showed her she was going to have to do her best to make sure this feud didn’t end in bloodshed. As the water rushed over her, she accepted one simple truth. She was her father’s daughter. And therefore she was going to decide what she wanted, determine what she could live with, identify her allies, and act accordingly.

Everyone wanted her to be some version of Princess Clara. Well, she was dreadfully tired of all of it, but today, she thought. Today she’d give the people what they wanted.She'd be Princess Clara, but only to achieve her own ends.

She purposefully chose one of the dresses her father ordered her to buy from Bonwit Teller, a blue abstract floral dress with elbow-length sleeves trimmed in white. The money was lodged in her glove, her largest day bag had everything she could need, and she set off with purpose. 

“Leroy, I was hoping you were still on duty. You worked last night?” Clara asked in her brightest voice as she stepped into the elevator.

“Yes, miss. Everyone’s working long hours this weekend.”

Clara touched her hand to Leroy’s, leaving behind a fifty dollar bill (it’s a maneuver she’d watched her father perform countless times). “Well, I just wanted to say thank you for all you do to keep my guests and me safe, and our comings and goings private.” She met his eye the whole time.

“Of course, Miss Thompson.” 

Leroy watched her walk down the hallway towards the main lobby. Since the day that masked man had carried her onto the elevator while she’d clung to him like she’d never let go, he’d thought they had something going on.

* * *

People paid more attention to the three boxes of sfogliatellas from Formica Brothers she carried than they did to Clara when she walked into the Sheriff’s office. 

Eli looked terrible, she thought. He’d barely shaved, and she was fairly certain she could see tissue under his collar where he’d cut his jaw. “You look horrid,” she said when Deputy Halloran closed the door and she sat down in the wooden chair across from her uncle's disastrous desk.

Eli looked at his niece as he took a lobster tail. The outfit she wore probably cost as much as his mortgage payment. Combined with her dress from yesterday, the price of both would probably keep all of his eight kids fed, housed, and clothed for a month. Her hands were still in her lap, not moving anxiously across her skirt like they were yesterday. She’d started doing that after Mabel, he remembered. He'd watched Clara’s small hands smoothing her pearl-gray skirt over and over as they sat in the pew during the funeral mass. 

Actually, he thought, today she was positively glowing. “I take it Harrow found you,” he said, not bothering to hide the amusement in his voice.

Clara finished pulling off her gloves and reached for a pastry. “He did. Uncle Eli, I think we need to talk. Really talk. Don’t you?”

Eli stared at her wordlessly. What did she know about what happened after he saw her yesterday? The fight with Nucky, O'Neill, who told her? He realized he was being ridiculous.

“About the fact someone scalped Jackson Parkhurst last night?”

“Did they? I can’t say I’m sorry,” Clara said in a purposefully blank voice. “No, I think we need to talk about all of it. Father was...he was rough in the car. I realized I’ve never considered what he’ll do-to you, to Jimmy, to Richard-if you aren’t successful. And Uncle Eli, I don’t know what’s going on, but I know what his day with Henry Daugherty means.”

Fuck, he didn’t know what Henry Daugherty means, he thought, and now both Clara and Nucky had brought it up. “Tell me,” he said.

“I think Father is calling in favors from the Harding administration. I assume he’s going to have his charges moved from state to federal court, and then have Attorney General Daugherty assign a friendly prosecutor? There was a young man with the party last night I didn’t recognize. And Uncle Eli, that party last night? It was a full-on bacchanalia.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Eli said, annoyed that Nucky, Jimmy, and Clara all used words no one else knew.

Closing her eyes, she reached for another word before giving up. “An orgy. It was a loud orgy. So loud I heard it from my room.”

Eli stammered and looked down at the pastry in his hand. No little girl should have been raised at the Ritz, he thought. He wondered how many bachawhatchamacallums Clara had heard over the years. He still remembered the Nucky’s Nocturne party for the state government back when Clara was thirteen or so when the drunk commissioner wandered into her bedroom while she slept. Nucky’s response had been to take over more of the eighth floor and build a private hallway to Clara’s room. No wonder she fell for Harrow, he thought. For all her father's money, he doubted that she ever felt truly safe.

“So now it’s your turn. You need to tell me everything.” Clara said, looking straight at him.

It was like lancing a boil. Once he started talking he couldn’t stop. Gillian, the Commodore’s stroke, the warehouse explosion, Jimmy’s disastrous meeting at Parkhurst’s house, all of it spewed forth.

“So what’s the plan?” Clara asked when he was done, careful not to let her horror show. No one had an overarching plan, she thought. They were just doing things and hoping it all worked out. She could think of seven ways to bring them to their knees; she shuddered to think of what her father would be able to dream up.

He stared at her. “To overthrow your father.”

“But how are you going to get there, other than the charges?” Eli didn't answer, and Clara’s heart sank.

Clara sighed. “Look, I need to go. But I will not allow this to end in bloodshed. We have to figure out a way through. Take me to lunch at the Knife and Fork in a few days?”

* * *

Angela heard the knock and smiled to see Clara standing on the porch holding a box from Formica Brothers. 

“I come bearing gifts,” Clara said as she walked in.

“You brought lobster tails!” Tommy cried out when he saw the box.

“Sfogliatella,” Clara and Angela said in unison.

Tommy took one and ambled back to the sunroom.

Angela looked over Clara, who seemed a thousand times happier than she had the day before, and yet Angela could see that her eyes were still shadowed with anxiety. She’d worried about Richard and Clara all morning, thinking about how he looked when appeared on her doorstep the night before, and Clara’s frantic worry yesterday while they lay on the beach. 

“Did you find Richard?” 

Clara smiled at her. “He found me. I need to talk to Jimmy. Is he here?”

“He’s sleeping.”

“Is he?” Clara gestured to her dress.

“I think so,” Angela replied and Clara smiled before she ran up the stairs.

Jimmy was sound asleep on his back, snoring like the dickens, and she could see the straps of his undershirt. Thank god, she thought. On his bedside table was a half-empty glass of water. She picked up the glass and emptied the contents on his face. 

Jimmy sat straight up sputtering, assuming Tommy had spilled water on him, only to be confronted by Clara holding an empty glass.

“Oh good, you’re awake. I think we need to talk, don’t you?” Clara said, smiling down at him like she was paying a social call.

“What the fuck, Clara?” Jimmy wiped the water off his face. “You’re damn lucky I didn’t shoot you!”

“Really? Because judging from recent events I think I’m lucky you didn’t scalp me! Or, rather...ask Richard to do it?” Clara tilted her head and smiled, but he knew her well enough to hear the venom in her voice.

His head felt like he had slammed it against a cement wall, and he could feel the remnants of adrenaline, steak, and whiskey in his stomach. He did not fucking need this. When the high of the night, of eating steaks and drinking with Richard ended, and he lay smoking in bed a seed of doubt sneaked in. Clara putting into words his deepest doubts was not how he wanted to start his day.

“What the hell were you thinking? You’ve already lost an entire warehouse of liquor-what’s that worth, a hundred thousand dollars, more or less?-so those old Yacht Club men are already furious, and now you’ve scalped one? What’s the play, Jimmy? What are you doing?”

“He insulted me.”

Clara blinked and started laughing. “He insulted you, so you scalped him? The hell, Jimmy? Do you know why Father’s so successful? He doesn’t dignify the taunts of old men with a response. If he did, the Commodore would have been sewn into one of his own horrid taxidermy projects long ago. Father knows when to act, and he knows when to do nothing.”

Jimmy swung his legs out of bed. If Clara didn’t want to see him in his boxers she shouldn’t come busting into his bedroom. Jesus, where was Ange? Tommy? Richard? 

Richard. “So I send Rich to you last night and you make him talk?”

Clara was prepared. “Richard? Do you remember who you are speaking to, James? I know everyone you are gathering in that horror show of a house and you'd be amazed at how quickly they share information when I look at them like I care and make sympathetic noises. You might want to try that."

"I don't need your advice-"

Downstairs Angela opened the door. "Richard, I'm glad to see you." He looked so much better, she thought. That horrible vacant expression from last night was gone. 

Richard heard heavy footfalls and raised voices from upstairs. 

"Clara's here," Angela said quietly. "She and Jimmy are...talking."

Upstairs, Clara snapped back. "Oh, you don't? Because from what I hear the Commodore is incapacitated, and your mother's tongue isn't just in your ear, it's in your mouth. In front of everyone." 

Jimmy glared at her. He'd never hit a woman, but did Clara count? Some sort of sibling exception?

"Now that it's clear Father has a new plan, what's yours?"

Damn it, Nucky had a new plan? Fuck it all. He lit a cigarette and tried to think through what Clara could mean.

Clara rolled her eyes. Goodness, she thought, was she the only one who could see the obvious? "I'm going to let you parse this for yourself. Think about who Father's guest was at the Dedication, and let me add that the party Father threw for said guest is illegal in all 48 states."

Jimmy sucked on the cigarette. The Attorney General, but the charges were at the state level. Shit, he realized. Damn Nucky.

"Ah, I see you've gotten there. So what's your plan if Father beats the charges?"

Silence.

"Okay, that's concerning. What about what his Irishman did to your warehouse?"

The blank look on his face told her what she needed to know.

"Why do you think the Irishman blew up the warehouse?" he finally asked.

"There's this whole idea that information is power you might consider. Do you ever read a damn newspaper?"

"Fuck you, Clara."

"Am I not saying it right? Let me try this,"Clara's voice became higher, breathier. "James, you are so big and strong and smart. The world is going to be so impressed when it finds out what kind of a man it's dealing with. Where does one find such a man not afraid to slaughter his own chances of success by answering a playground taunt with a scalping, thereby angering his only source of financial and political support? When has the world ever seen such a leader before?"

Clara's voice changed back to her own as Jimmy angrily began putting pants on. "You can not listen to Gillian. Jimmy, you have thrown all of our lives into the fire. You have to have a plan. Or, hell, let's go to my father right now and we will both beg forgiveness. Because I swear to you, this summer will not end with me standing in tears by a grave. I will not allow it. You have twisted everyone I love into this nightmare, but I am not going to lose anyone. Not over your ill-conceived coup." 

Jimmy brushed past her and started down the stairs. Clara followed close behind.

"Am I not doing this correctly? When I whisper things in your ear, are you supposed to feel my breath? Should I use my tongue?"

It was only the sight of Richard and Angela standing at the bottom of the stairs staring up at them that made Jimmy and Clara stop. 

"I was going to come up. Gillian's on the phone," Angela told them, looking from one to the other. 

Jimmy stifled a groan.

Clara's face twisted. "What you are doing? Better hurry," she said with faux brightness before her voice turned gravelly. "Mommy's calling."

Jimmy slammed his fist against the wall as he went to answer the phone. 

Clara covered her face with her hands for a moment, mostly to block out the shocked faces of Angela and Richard. When Richard had last seen her she was kissing him goodbye in her kimono. A few hours later she was yelling at Jimmy on the stairs. It had already been a day.

"My apologies. We had...family issues to address," Clara said when she started down the stairs again. 

"Is everything okay?" Angela asked, and Clara's fury raged again as she thought how horribly unfair it as that Angela didn't know what Jimmy was doing. How long, Clara wondered, would her loyalty to Jimmy outweigh her other concerns?

"You need to ask Jimmy," was the answer she landed on, but she didn't miss the look of betrayal on Angela's face. 

Tommy called, and Angela walked away. Clara smiled sadly at Richard. 

“Mmm. Long morning?”

"Busy," she said simply as reached up to touch the back of his neck. "You cut your hair."

"Can you fucking believe it," Jimmy complained to Angela in the kitchen. "She came upstairs and threw water in my face, and this is what he gets."

* * *

"Miss Clara Thompson is here to see you," Mary announced as Leander Whitlock sat down at his desk. 

Leander stared at his maid. What could Thompson's daughter possibly be doing here? Thompson's daughter, he remembered, but she and Darmody considered themselves siblings. Couldn't be a coincidence the girl was here now, after the morning he'd had. 

"Show her in," he instructed.

Clara looked around the house as she was shown in. Very Victorian, she thought, and she'd love to take down the velvet curtains and apply white paint throughout. But it was the home of a cultivated and civilized man, she decided, looking at the paintings and books.The lack of horrific decor choices already made him the best of the Yacht Club men in her mind.

"Clara, what an unexpected surprise," he said, taking her hand. "What brings you here?"

"I find myself in need of a lawyer."

What an unexpected answer, Leander thought. What an unexpected morning.

"Your father has attorneys."

Clara smoothed her skirt. "My best interest, my priorities, and my father's don't always align."

He stood and moved to the bar cart. "What's your pleasure?"

"Oh, I..."

"If you are grown-up enough to hire a lawyer, you are grown-up enough to have a drink with him."

She nodded. "Whiskey and water, please." Clara pulled her checkbook from her bag. "How much is the retainer?"

Leander pushed down a laugh at the idea of little Clara Thompson ready to write him a check. "Twenty dollars."

After she finished writing the check she laid it on his desk and accepted the drink.

"Does this mean we have attorney-client privilege?" Clara asked.

"It does. Here's to a prosperous relationship," he said as they clinked glasses.

"Did you know that Jackson Parkhurst was scalped last night?" he asked. Parkhurst wasn't one of the girl's favorites, he knew. He remembered the Easter dinner where Clara looked like she was going attack him across the table.

"I know from my own grandfather how sometimes the elderly can have the most unlikely accidents. It's amazing the damage a fall can do," Clara said levelly, wondering if she was going to have to discuss it with every man in Atlantic City.

"A fall pulled off his scalp?"

Clara looked up at him with large, innocent eyes. "Is that not what happened?"

Leander sighed. "That's what almost everyone will think, yes. After we pay off Jackson's manservant, who has a story about two young men, one with a distinctive face..."

It was slight, but he saw her wince. How interesting. 

"We are going to be honest with each other?" he asked, and Clara nodded. 

"The relationship between Jimmy and his mother..."

"If Gillian wasn't whispering in his ear I'd sleep better at night," Clara said. "Jimmy is smart, and brave. One day he's going to be a great leader. But he needs good advice, sound advice, and Gillian's own...desires interfere."

"And what are your goals that don't align with your father's?" he asked.

"Well, I want to be successful. On my own. I have a new contract from the Stratemeyer Syndicate for my next books and I thought it would be a good idea to have a lawyer look at it before I signed it. I also think I'll have to file taxes next year, and I'm not sure I'm keeping my records correctly." Clara retrieved her papers from her bag. 

Leander looked through them briefly. They were neatly organized, and Clara was making money with her writing, he saw. He should have charged her more.

"Give me two days to look over this. What other goals are you and your father at odds over?"

Clara sighed. "I don't want the people I love destroyed."

"And you love your father, your uncle, James?" he asked.

She nodded.

Whitlock reached for a name but it wouldn't come to him, and there was no way to describe the man that wouldn't insult Clara if his instinct was correct. "And James's friend?"

Clara looked down at her hands."Richard Harrow. Yes."

Dear god. He fought the urge again to laugh. Had Nucky Thompson set out to raise two brilliant, headstrong, impetuous, rebellious children? Thompson raised them to be the Prince and Princess of the Boardwalk, but these two took their cues straight from the royal children of the Medicis.

He absolutely should have asked for a higher retainer.

* * *

It was three o'clock when she returned to the Ritz. Clara wanted a nap, and to get in a few hours of writing. Instead, there was a note on her door that just said 'See me.' 

Her father was in the drawing room, still in silk robe and pajamas, eating.

"Join me," he instructed. She took grillades and broiled tomatoes. The only thing'd she'd eaten all day was a lobster tail pastry with Uncle Eli, and the mix of stress, exhaustion, and whiskey was taking a toll.

"Feels like when you were in school," he said. "You'd come home, I'd be getting up, we'd eat together." She was well-dressed, he saw. "Where have you been?"

"Errands," she answered simply.

"I hope you weren't able to hear my guests while you were trying to sleep," he continued.

Clara smiled. "I certainly hope none of your guests heard me."

Nucky sighed. "Is this how its going to be?"

She pushed her food around on her plate. "How would you like it to be?"

"I'd enjoy loyalty and appreciation from my only child."

"I appreciate the brilliance of your gambit with Harry Daugherty."

Nucky's eyes narrowed, "Who told you about that?"

Clara laughed. "Who told me? Dear lord, Father, do you think me an imbecile who can't add two plus two?" Her father continued to glare at her. "What, are you going to lock me in my room for impertinence?"

"You'd be amazed at the places I could lock you, Clara."

Clara forced herself to remain still, not even allowing her hand to smooth her skirt. "I think it's time I make my own life, and move out. I'm almost twenty-three, it's past time really."

"No."

"No?"

"I don't need people thinking I can't control my own daughter."

"Yes, of course. I don't ever want to betray the optics."

They finished eating in silence. Clara knew she needed to defuse the tension. "Oh, I meant to tell you. Do you remember my friend Romola, from boarding school? You took us to dinner at the Red Fox Inn when you came to visit Middleburg?"

Nucky cast his mind back. Pretty girl, dark haired, he remembered. She had been in a film.

"What about her?"

"She was at Dorothy Grenville's wedding. Romola said you do business with her father?"

Interesting, Nucky thought. "What does her father do?"

"He was a lawyer in Chicago when Romola and I were at school, but now he lives in Cincinnati and is in...your line of work."

"He's a county treasurer?" Nucky answered with a smile, and Clara smiled back.

"Something like that. His name is George Remus?"

"Your school friend is George Remus's daughter?"

Clara nodded. "He left Romola's mother and married again. Romola's stories about her new stepmother make me grateful all over again for Margaret."

"You like Margaret?"

"You know I do."

When Clara rose to go back to her room Nucky reached into his pocket. "Here," he said.

"Thank you," Clara said, "But I don't want your money. But thank you, Father, for lunch and for...all of it." Clara went down her hallway, knowing she had already made her decision.

He watched her walk away, and later opened the door to her hallway, listening to the sound of the typewriter. She writes fast, he thought. At some point he should read something she wrote. Maybe it would help him understand the pretty stranger who shared the eighth floor with him.

* * *

Richard hurried back to his room. He was supposed to meet Clara in the alley in less than thirty minutes, and he wanted to clean up a little. As he walked past Mrs. Siddons's house he saw someone was sitting on his small porch. His hand moved to the Glock, but then he saw a straw shoe.

"Clara?" 

She smiled up at him. "I missed you. I didn't want to wait. I hope that's okay?"

He helped her to her feet. She wasn't wearing the society girl outfit from earlier, he realized. She'd changed into a skirt and blouse. "Of course." 

Even now he was hesitant with her, and his hands couldn't quite decide where to settle. 

"Do you know what was going on in my father's suite last night?" Clara asked.

Richard nodded. 

She badly wanted to say the next part, but she was anxious. She took a breath."I want to be with you, as much as possible, when we aren't working or busy. But I don't want to be with you at the Ritz, because I don't want all of that near us. So I'm basically inviting myself...here."

"I. Mmm. Yes. But it's not as nice. As your room," he said. The thought of how he could support Clara still haunted him, because how could they have a life together if he couldn't? Although when she stood on his porch in a skirt it was a less daunting thought then when she wore her best clothes.

Clara smiled. "I really don't care, as long as it's just us." 

Richard nodded and pulled the key from his pocket, and took Clara's hand to pull her through the door ahead of him. He took one last look to make sure no one was outside before he shut the door behind them and locked it.


	21. Something Like Happiness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place before and during "The Age of Reason" and "Peg of Old." 
> 
> This chapter? Is smut and fluff...and then a major dose of angst.
> 
> Please read the notes at the end of the chapter.

Richard was alone in his bed for the first time since Memorial Day. He felt a twinge of panic (it had all just been a dream, he was still in the woods) until he saw Clara sitting at the desk wrapped in her robe-no, she called it a kimono, he thought-, her pen flying across the page as she wrote. There were small signs of her all around the room. The additional pillow under his head, the quilt smashed at the end of the bed, the pile of books on the bedside table, even the slight orange smell on the sheets. Two of her dresses hung in the closet with his clothes. The dresser he had left empty now held some of her things. Clara still went back to the Ritz most days so she could write while he worked (and, he assumed, to keep up appearances), but at night she was either here when he came home or got back shortly after. He liked coming home now, and he liked waking up.

Clara was deep into her work, so he decided he should start his own. He fished his undershirt and boxers from under the bed where they landed the night before, and also found the green one-piece lace and silk...thing Clara had worn to bed. He shifted when he realized she was only wearing her kimono. He dressed, choosing not one of his new suits but clothes he had brought from Wisconsin, but then hesitated to leave without telling her.

It took a couple of attempts to find his voice. "I'll. Mmm. Be right back," he told her while his hand hovered just over her shoulder. Clara's fingers reached up to brush his, but she didn't stop writing. When he returned, he set her coffee (light tan instead of the black of his own) and a bacon roll next to her left hand.

"Thank you," she murmured and reached for the coffee.

Usually, he ate standing at the dresser at the foot of the bed, but since Clara was so lost in her work, he sat on the edge of the bed and ate his breakfast before he went outside.

It was the smell that brought her back to reality. Sweet but acrid, it always smelled like summer to her. No, she thought, rubbing her right hand with her left, it smelled like the color green. She looked around the room as she stood up. The bed was made, the step-in she'd worn the night before neatly folded on top, but she had no idea where Richard was.

The slight whirring sound, which would come near and then grow distant, made her pull her kimono close and open the door. Richard was cutting the grass. The masked side of his face was turned towards the door. She leaned against the door frame and watched him. He was dressed in the tan pants and collarless shirt he wore the day she met him in Chicago. The first time she'd seen him in a collared shirt and tie, she remembered, was when he picked up her from her bridal luncheon (a slight shudder went down her spine at the thought). That red tie was still one of her favorites, but she'd missed seeing him in the collarless shirts when he stopped wearing them.

Even though Clara knew nothing about cutting grass, she could perceive the care he was taking in making his lines perfectly straight. She was growing ever more familiar with the care, and precision Richard brought to any task where he made use of his hands. Her heart sped up a little in her chest. When he turned at the end of the yard, he saw her, and she smiled and waved. She knew if she stood and watched him she'd make him nervous so she went back inside.

The mask itched terribly, and he could feel the sweat dripping down his back. Clara must be done writing, he thought. He would shower, and then he should take her out since he had the whole day off. A moving picture, something, even if they had to drive a town or two over. It wasn't right to just entrap her in his room.

When the door opened her body was almost humming with anticipation. She handed him a damp towel and a glass of water as he came in, but it took all her self control to step back and let him have a moment of privacy.

Clara's small gestures of caring always made him feel like he was coming undone. Even when she had just stood in the door and waved at him, he thought things were too good. He set the mask on the desk so he could wipe his face and drink. As soon as he set the water and towel back down, he turned back towards her hesitantly. He was still getting used to being around her with the mask off in the daylight.

Suddenly, she moved. Before Richard could say anything, Clara was pushing him back against the wall. The unexpected feeling of her tongue behind his ear sent him reeling.

His skin was slick under her tongue and tasted salty and like grass. Chlorophyll, she thought dazedly, half-remembering an old science lecture. She wanted more of that taste and her mouth started working its way across his throat as her hands pushed his suspenders off his shoulders, feeling the thin, crisp material of his shirt under her hands as she went.

"Mmm. Clara. I'm. Sweaty," he managed to get out.

"Yes," she murmured against his throat. She was busy unbuttoning his shirt and shifted around him so one of her legs was between his and began rubbing her hip against him in earnest. She heard his breath hitch. His hand went to her waist but then dropped away just as fast. Clara looked up at him.

"I. Mmm. Was cutting. Grass," he said.

Clara smiled at him while pulling his shirt free from his pants. "I know. I saw." Even though the evidence that he was enjoying her attention was pressed against her, she could feel his confusion as well. "I grew up in a hotel. It's very exotic to me."

The shirt discarded, she pulled on his undershirt with one hand while her other hand palmed him through his trousers. His head dropped on top of hers, and his hand grabbed her side in response, but once more, he let go immediately.

"What's wrong?"

"I need. A bath."

Clara smiled, untied her kimono, and let it slip to the floor. "What a marvelous idea. Let's go take one."

His mouth worked for a moment before the word would come out. "Together?"

For a moment, Clara lost her confidence and wished her kimono wasn't lying on the floor at her feet.

"Do you not want to?"

He swallowed. "No. Mmm. I want to."

* * *

Clara wasn't quite sure how they ended up back up on the bed. Her skin still felt like the remnants of an electrical storm was raging across it, and the rest of her felt like jelly. She wasn't sure any of her limbs would ever work again. Richard slipped an arm around her, and she leaned against him with a content sigh. A nap, she thought, was the only thing in the world she wanted.

"I cut the grass. Mmm. Every other week."

"I'll make a note," Clara laughed. I'm happy, she thought.

Her hair was still wet and was loose. She always tied it up, he'd never really seen it down. He brushed it back from her face. The guilt was eating at him.

"Clara. I don't want." It was an effort to form the words. "To take. Advantage of you."

She chortled. "I'm fairly certain I was the one taking advantage."

His hand danced back and forth across her arm. "This isn't. The way. Ladies are supposed. To be treated."

Rolling over was difficult because her body still wasn't completely recovered and the space between Richard's body and the wall was tight. She brushed her knuckles across his jaw after she managed it.

"I think under the circumstances of this damn feud we are doing the best we can." She refused to let her voice crack, although her own anxiety was nibbling away at the happy contentment of earlier. "But I more or less moved in without asking. If it was to fast, if..."

He closed his eye. He wanted to say it right. "I like. You being here. But I don't know." He swallowed several times. Clara waited. "Clara, I could never. Give you. What you have."

She smiled at him. "A life where I hear orgies outside my door? A life where I feel trapped? A life where I spend half my time forced to entertain people I despise?" She closed her eyes. "Marrying Darcy meant my life wouldn't materially change. But it also meant I lay in bed at night and cried at the thought of him touching me, of having to wake up to him. Whereas I was just thinking of how happy and content I am here, with you."

His arm tightened around her unconsciously.

"I love you, and I love this feeling of us being cocooned away from the world. But I know we will have to make everything official, if for no other reason than because I'd like to walk down the Boardwalk with you," the words came out of Clara in a rush as anxiety began dancing around her thoughts once more.

"End of. Summer?" Richard asked, after calculating a timeline.

"Do you think that will be enough time?"

He had the same sickening feeling he had whenever he let himself think about the coup. It was worse now that he knew how terrified Clara was. That would give them two and a half months.

"Where. Should we live?" he said, forcing himself to believe that things would calm down enough that he and Clara could have a life of their choosing.

"Here?"

Richard looked around. "Once you move. In your books. And clothes where. Would we fit?"

Clara laughed. "Oh, what no one knows is how funny you are. I won't need as many clothes once...well."

Richard made a noise she knew was a laugh.

"I just meant I doubt I'll need as many clothes for parties and meetings and the like."

"A kitchen would. Be good," he said thoughtfully.

"Something like Jimmy and Angela's old apartment would be nice, although I'll miss this place."

"You'll miss. The grass?"

They were distracted for a few minutes.

"Yes. A place with grass would be lovely," Clara said when they came back up for air. She was quiet for a moment. "A kitchen will be nice, too, but honestly, I can only make coffee, scrambled eggs, and canned soup. Well, and toast. If we get a toaster."

"You don't need. A toaster. To make toast."

"Yes, I've heard there are people capable of such alchemy. I'm just saying if you'd like me to make toast, we'll need a toaster."

He ran his hand down her arm. He wanted her to make toast.

"I can. Cook."

"Really? Good to know, it will keep us from starving." She sighed. " Once we get a stove, I'll get a cookbook, and I'm sure I'll learn. I've just never had the chance. Father doesn't like the smell of cooking food in the suite, and in New York, I worked so much that Angela did all the cooking. Plus, she was better at it." Clara was quiet for a moment. She wanted the next part, the two of them alone together in some small apartment, but she knew they both wanted more, too.

"I want us to have years where it's just us. So we can have adventures and spend days like this, but eventually...is there anything else you want to do?"

He looked down shyly. He knew what she was asking."Before the war. I worked. At the hardware store. I always thought. I'd like to own. One."

"Oh, you are so meticulous. I could see you being good at it."

"We could. Put a desk. In the storeroom. For you to write."

Clara leaned her head against his shoulder. It sounded almost like a fairy tale. Just...a normal life. Walking to work together. Writing while Richard...did whatever people did at a hardware store (Clara wasn't certain she'd ever been in one, but thought it probably required keeping lots of small things organized).

"Well, we should definitely save our money for a hardware store and a house."

"I want to. Build us. A House," he said. "Can I show. You?"

She nodded, confused. Richard pulled away and went to retrieve something from the desk. It was a magazine of some sort, and Clara could see it was well-read. Clara sat up against the headboard. She saw a picture of a large white house with a red roof and dark shutters and a long stone path and fountain. In white text, it was titled 'Honor Bilt Modern Homes' and on the bottom was the Sears and Roebuck logo. Richard flipped through the pages knowingly, and she saw penciled calculations written in the margins and hand-drawn sketches on some of the pages.

"The houses. Come ready to assemble. But we can make. Modifications."

"I've read about them. There was an article in  _ The Philadelphia Record _ saying Sears was opening a sales office in Philly where you can walk through some of the floor plans."

Of course, it had to be in Philadelphia, he thought. "We should. Go. Someday," he answered, but Clara was to busy looking through the catalog to notice the catch in his voice.

"I love this one," Clara said when she saw the Hathaway, a small two-story white house with a porch and window boxes.

It was one of the simplest houses in the book. He wondered what drew Clara to it. "Why?"

She smiled uncertainly. "It's silly, I suppose. After we moved into the Ritz and I'd go visit my friends, the ones who lived in two-story houses with porches? Those seemed like real homes for real families, you know? And window boxes I just like."

He rubbed her hand for a moment and then flipped further into the book. "I think the Hathaway. Is to small. If. Mmm. We want..." He couldn't bring himself to say if they wanted children, so he just flipped through the book until he found the Americus.

"This is. A bigger version. Of the Hathaway," he said, showing her a white house with a deeper porch and even more window boxes.

Clara nodded, afraid to speak. She curled against his side as Richard explained he could build columned bookcases to divide the living room from the dining room and told her the different choices they had for setting up the kitchen.

* * *

"Clara just called. She's held up at a League of Women Voters meeting, but she'll be here in an hour or so," Angela told Jimmy and Richard as they walked through the front door.

"Don't we need to leave to make curtain?" Jimmy asked.

"Were you able to get tickets to  _ Nobody's Money _ ?"

"I did, but first week of tryouts is always rough, Ange."

"It's okay, I just want to laugh and it's the only farce currently running."

Jimmy smirked, because if Clara was here he knew she would say something like 'oh, that's hardly the  _ only _ farce running in Atlantic City at the moment.' Then he was annoyed because flesh and blood Clara was bad enough. He didn't need her voice in his head when she wasn't even around.

"Richard, will you be okay with Tommy until Clara gets here?" Angela asked.

Tommy was playing in the sunroom, and Richard remembered the horror that happened last time he tried playing with the boy. He did have something he'd like to do, though. "I need. To go to Blatt's. And pick something up. Is it okay. If I take Tommy?"

Angela nodded. She'd feel better if Richard had something concrete to do with Tommy until Clara arrived. "Of course."

"You aren't worried?" Jimmy asked as Richard loaded Tommy into his car.

"About Richard? No, he's so much better."

Richard regarded the little boy next to him thoughtfully. "Can you. Keep a. Secret?" he asked.

Tommy smiled up at him. "Yes. Me and Mema have lots."

Richard nodded. "We are going.To Blatt's. To buy. Clara a present. But you. Can't tell anyone."

"When Clara takes me to Blatt's we get cookies at the bakery."

"We can get. Cookies."

"Can I get ice cream for being a good secret keeper?" Tommy asked.

"Fine. You can. Get ice cream."

The jewelry counter at Blatt's looked like a very serious place and was quite busy. Richard knew it was foolish, but he was reassured by Tommy's small hand in his own.

"What are we going to get Clara?" Tommy asked.

"Mmm. A ring," Richard managed to say.

Richard found the rings and then was stymied by the number of choices. In his mind, he could see the large diamond ring she wore when they met, the one Blaine gave her. She'd hated it. She complained it caught on everything and was heavy.

He wouldn't be able to afford a ring like that, anyway. But he wanted her to have something she'd like.

"I like this one," Tommy said, pointing to a ring even larger than Clara's first engagement ring.

"Mmm. Tommy, that ring. Is more money. Then I have. It also. Is bigger than. Clara's finger." He could see Tommy had his father's taste. Suddenly Richard wished he'd asked Angela to go shopping with him.

"Clara likes green," Tommy said.

Richard nodded. Clara did wear a lot of green, and a lot of blue.

"May I help you gentlemen?" A man wearing a white carnation asked them. Richard noticed that the man startled when Richard looked up.

"We're here to buy Clara a ring. She likes green. It's a secret. Richard don't have much money. Her fingers are little," Tommy announced.

"Tommy," Richard said warningly. "I want. To buy," he tried to control his mouth twitch and just say it, but he couldn't. "An engagement ring. She doesn't like. Only diamonds."

"She likes green," Tommy repeated.

The jeweler took in the duo. He had worked in Atlantic City for a long time; a disfigured man and a little boy looking to buy a green engagement ring? He could do that.

He put together a tray of rings and brought it out.

Tommy pointed to an insanely large emerald, but Richard saw it at once. It was an oval stone that was a dark bluish-green. It looked like the color of the ocean. On either side were two small square diamonds set in a trapezoid-shaped setting.

"How much?" he managed to say. The salesman told him a number.

"Do you know what ring size the young lady takes?"

Richard didn't know they came numbered like shoes. He opened his wallet and took out a small piece of paper. "I. Mmm. Traced the ring. She wears. On her right hand."

The man took the paper and Richard's money, and then returned with a small velvet box. For a moment, Richard panicked. What was he doing? He was being ridiculous. Clara was never going to marry him. What was he going to do, sit in Nucky's hallway and then walk into his office to ask him for Clara's hand?

"You should get ribbon," Tommy said. "And then get me cookies."

"Ribbon?" Richard asked, looking down at him.

"Mommy always puts ribbons on presents."

Ribbon. He could do that. He closed his eye for a moment, thinking of Clara curled against him as they talked about what kind of apartment, what kind of life, what kind of house they should have. She said she wanted a life with him. He put the box in his pocket.

"Tommy. We need to buy. One more thing. For Clara."

Clara was surprised that the beach house was empty when she arrived. She found a note saying Richard had taken Tommy shopping. I'm sorry I missed that, she thought, trying to imagine Tommy and Richard wondering the aisles of Woolworths or Blatts. She knew that Tommy would soak Richard for a variety of treats.

A few minutes later Tommy and Richard came in.

"We have cookies!" Tommy announced.

"It looks like you've already had some, and ice cream as well," Clara said, leaning down to look at Tommy's face. "Where did you two go?"

"Blatts to buy you a surprise," Tommy said.

Richard closed his eye and prayed. Proposing at Jimmy's house while Clara tried to wipe Tommy's face was not what he had in mind. He didn't actually have a plan, yet, but it certainly wasn't this.

"We bought a toaster," Tommy finished, and Richard swore the kid smirked up at him in a perfect imitation of Jimmy's smirk.

Clara blinked and smoothed her skirt. "Go wash your face. Call out if you need help." She watched until Tommy started up the stairs, then she turned and kissed Richard hard around the mask.

She laced her fingers into his when she pulled back. "I guess we should get bread for breakfast."

* * *

Adrenaline and anger were still coursing through his veins when he opened his door and saw Clara sprawled across his bed, sound asleep. It was a hot, sticky night for June, even by Atlantic City standards. He longed for the cool, crisp nights of Wisconsin summers, but not nearly as much as he longed for the feel of her legs sliding against his. After hanging up his jacket and hat, he put his mask on top of the desk, undressed, and walked over to the foot of the bed.

Clara was wearing a lacy pale blue one-piece... thing (she wore them, he liked them, he had no idea what they were called) that barely covered anything. In the heat, she had kicked off the sheets, which were crumpled at her feet. It was hot, she was obviously tired; he should let her sleep, he thought. He started to smooth the sheets over her but instead rested his hand on her ankle. The touch caused her to stir.

"You're home," she said groggily, and a small burst of pleasure shot through him at the implication that they were home together. "What time is it?"

"Late," he scratched out and let his fingers slowly move up her leg, using his other arm to brace against the footboard. Fucking Charlie Luciano, he thought, almost the reason he hadn't come home to her. Fucking Rothstein. Fucking Nucky Thompson (Richard couldn't dwell on Mr. Thompson while his hand moved past Clara's knee). And that fucking butcher Jimmy had pulled into their lives. Fuck all of these games he didn't understand. Destroy the man who sliced an innocent girl's face. Fine. Keep Clara alive. He understood that. Watch over Mrs. Schroeder and the children. Sure. Work out how to get the booze from a boat in the ocean, and then distribute the alcohol to various places while guarding against Prohies and rival gangs. Okay.

A small piece of biting pride floated up when he remembered that it was he, not Jimmy, that figured out how to divide the work, how to run the gangs of men to move the alcohol successfully. Jimmy had big ideas but often neglected to think about the details. Another biting piece of pride joined it as he watched a flush spread from Clara's chest to her face, heard her breathing become erratic, and felt her leg tremble as his fingers trailed higher until they traced the lace edge of her undergarment. When he moved his hand to her other ankle, she sighed in frustration, but he slowly started the game again as he thought about the night.

Whatever was going on with Jimmy, with work, now felt like twenty games all happening simultaneously. Richard wanted to ask Jimmy tonight if he had any idea of who his allies actually were. He thought of Clara asking him to leave Atlantic City with her, her fear almost palpable. And that was before the Commodore had his stroke, and Gillian Darmody began sitting in on meetings. He didn't understand Jimmy's relationship with his mother, or the darkness on Clara's face when she talked about it. Still, he knew Gillian brought out Jimmy's worse impulses. After Clara yelled that Jimmy was playing hopscotch when he should be playing chess, Richard worried all the time. And the stakes just kept getting higher.

The sound of Clara's sharp intake of breath as his fingers once more hit lace made him forget what he was thinking about and this time he let his hand continue working its way up, causing her hands to grip the bottom sheet and her back to arch. After a few minutes, his other hand left the footboard, grabbed her ankle, and pulled her down towards the foot of the bed.

Clara gasped. She had only been half awake when his hand had started drifting up her calf; by the time his fingers disappeared up the open leg of her step in any rational thought she was regaining was replaced by the fog of desire. He pulled her up, so she was on her knees and started kissing her. They were hard, claiming kisses that made her heartbeat speed up. His hands were curled around hers, but then he started tracing his fingertips up her arms. She shivered, and he pulled back when his hands reached to the straps on her shoulders. He looked at her for consent, and then pulled them down to her waist before his hands moved up to start kneading her breasts.

Over the last weeks, even when she climbed into bed wearing the step-ins she knew he liked, she had to make the initial overture. Even then, even though she liked everything they did, Richard always touched her delicately, like he was afraid he might hurt her in some way. There was little delicacy in his touch tonight. It's because he wanted her, she thought and trembled even more with excitement. One hand drifted back down between her legs, while his mouth closed back over hers and she had to put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. He wasn't wearing his undershirt, she thought. He always came to bed in it, even if she pulled it off immediately.

Suddenly his hands moved to her elbows, and he guided her to stand up at the end of the bed. She looked down at him as he pushed the step in out of the way. Clara's breath was coming in fast gasps. She was trying to think, everything was so different, but she couldn't keep her mind on any single thought when Richard's hands kept doing new things to her.

"Trust me?" he asked in a voice even more gravelly than usual while looking up at her.

Clara nodded.

He pulled her arms back behind his head, which pulled her body tight against his. "Jump."

For a moment she froze, but then she jumped hesitantly. Richard's hands went under her thighs, and he pulled her legs around his waist. Clara laughed as he spun them away from the bed and sat her down on the dresser. He smiled up at her bashfully. She ran her hands through his hair, drawing a shiver when her fingernails lightly raked down his neck.

The skin of her shoulder was silky under his mouth as he pushed into her, attempting to get used to the new angle and fumbling for a moment trying to find a rhythm. He knew he was successful when he heard Clara's low moan and felt her legs clench around his waist. It took sheer willpower to maintain the rhythm, but he didn't want to finish without her. His hand slid into between them and Clara's fingers grasped his shoulders in response. The muscles in her leg tightened under his hand, and it wasn't long before her grasp on his shoulders increased along with her panting. When she groaned out his name, he pulled her down as much as possible and finally allowed himself to start thrusting wildly.

They were still holding each other tightly as their breathing slowed slightly. The backs of his legs were vibrating, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could stand. He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her before he turned and fell back onto the bed. The edge of the footboard cut into the back of his legs, but he couldn't move. Clara lay silently on top of him. Suddenly, guilt flooded into his happy haze. Clara had been sleeping. He had been rough with her, tossing her around with abandon.

Clara's hand reached up to cup the right side of his face. "When I said," she said softly, "that I wanted adventures, I didn't know you'd dream up such a good one."

He looked down at her. "Mmm. You are. Okay?"

"More than. You aren't going to be with your legs like that, though."

They shifted up so they were on the bed properly. Clara curled against him, but long after Clara fell asleep, he lay there and worried about the dark currents waiting outside their door.

* * *

It was supposed to just be another meeting at the Commodore's house. Richard wasn't looking forward to it, because Luciano, Lansky, and Capone were coming, and Richard trusted none of them. Even worse, Mr. Whitlock-who often seemed to hold back some of Jimmy's worse impulses- wasn't going to be there. But Gillian Darmody was, and that made him even more nervous.

Lansky, at least, analyzed the situations he found himself in, Richard thought. Lansky tried to deescalate problems. Lansky was the only person involved in this (nightmare, Richard thought, and then pushed away the word as being disloyal) who seemed to think de-escalation was necessary. Lansky even tried to get Jimmy to pay the damn butcher.

Every minute of the meeting felt like broken glass against his skin, as he expected. Yet he would have never guessed that Eli Thompson was the biggest danger in the room. When Eli spoke, when Eli condemned Nucky to death, it took Richard several minutes to be able to speak. Eli had dismissed him when Richard asked him how he could kill his brother. Richard looked over at Jimmy, and he saw the wild pain and fear on Jimmy's face. It looked so much like the face Clara made when she was hurt or scared that it took his breath away.

After considering everyone in the room, he realized two things. Jimmy didn't want to order Nucky's death. And everyone else in the room wanted Nucky dead. He didn't speak again, waiting on everyone to leave so he could talk to Jimmy alone.

He finally went up to Eli when Capone showed no speed in leaving. He didn't understand how anyone could call for their sibling's death. Clara loved her uncle, how could she stand knowing what he started? "You could. Make your niece. An orphan?"

"It's for the best," Eli said. "Clara will cry, you'll kiss away the tears, and then you'll both be better off. Nucky sees her as a pawn. Watching her with Blaine, it was like watching someone slowly turn the light out inside her. But all Nucky sees is money, power. The fact she loves you will mean nothing to him. He'll destroy you, not because of your face but because you aren't the husband he's pictured for Clara, and Nucky insists we all bend to his will."

As Eli walked away, it hit Richard that he and Jimmy were also complicit in the plot to kill Nucky Thompson. To kill Clara's father.

After everyone else left Jimmy dropped back into the leather chair and hid his face in his hands.

"You are. Going to let. Capone send someone. To kill. Nucky?" Richard finally asked.

Jimmy stared at him blankly. All Jimmy could think about was the weekend Nucky took him and Clara to New York for Opening Weekend the year they turned fourteen. They'd seen the Dodgers play in Brooklyn, the Giants in Manhattan, and the Yankees in the Bronx. Nucky didn't even like baseball, but he and Clara were obsessed. Nucky had then taken them to Delmonicos, where they'd eaten with a bunch of baseball players. It was the greatest meal of Jimmy's life (he still had the signed baseball from that night in his things, to give to Tommy when he was older). Clara had been so smitten with Giants pitcher Jeff Tesreau that she'd barely been able to eat her steak. He hadn't seen that look on her face again until that day in the drawing-room at the Ritz when he'd seen her smoothing back Richard's hair.

Jesus Christ, what was he doing, Jimmy thought wildly. He had just wanted Nucky to go to jail, pay for his part in what happened to his Ma, and pay for how Nucky treated him when he returned from Walter Reed. Nucky had taught him to shoot, taken him in when Gillian's life was too crazy for her to take care of him, and taught him how to wear a dinner jacket and behave at fancy parties. Nucky'd paid for parochial school until high school, he'd offered to pay for boarding school for Jimmy when he sent Clara to Foxcroft (Gillian had refused to let Jimmy go), he'd paid for Princeton. He'd given Angela money while Jimmy was in the service.

' _ Because I swear to you, this summer will not end with me standing in tears by a grave. I will not allow it. You have twisted everyone I love into this nightmare, _ ' Clara's voice whispered in his ear. Clara. Richard had once talked about his sister, his twin, and said she was his earliest memory. Clara was Jimmy's. They were on a blanket outside, and Clara was stacking leaves. They couldn't have even been two. She was always the simplest relationship in his life. He loved her. She loved him. There was no darkness between them, just the long chains of a shared childhood. The night Clara found her mother dead, Gillian had taken him to the Thompsons'. Gillian cried like it was her mother who died. Clara was sitting on the floor of her room, her knees pulled up to her chest. She wouldn't talk or look at him. He knew she had her old stuffed rabbit hidden under her pillow, so he got it for her. She rested her cheek on the rabbit, and he held her hand until Nucky came to move them to the Ritz. She had held his hand the same way when she came to Walter Reed, while he raged at the pain and frustration of still being alive. When everything got so fucked up at Princeton, when he ran and abandoned Ange, he dumped it off on Clara. She'd convinced Nucky to support Angela and Tommy, befriended Angela, watched over them until he got back. And when he left again, she did it again. Then he walked into his room in Chicago, Pearl's room, and found Clara looking at Richard like she'd known him for years and Richard staring at her like she was something from a dream.

"I...don't want to," Jimmy said.

Richard stared at him. "Then. Why?"

Jimmy didn't have an answer. "I'm going to call it off," he said decisively. He was going to put a stop to it, and then he was going to find the money to pay Horowitz. He was getting distracted. Things were falling through the cracks. He could still fix this. This war was still winnable without killing the man he considered his father until he was twenty-two years old.

As Richard left the house, he didn't notice Gillian Darmody waiting in the shadows to speak to her son.

* * *

Jimmy was at the event for Jack Dempsey, and for once there wasn't much to do on a Friday. Richard had grand plans to take Clara up the shore, but they'd gotten distracted, and it was hours later when they went to take a shower. Clara was standing in front of the mirror, pinning her hair up while he sat at the desk.

"I should just bob it," Clara said. "I hate all the time it takes."

"You. Would look. Pretty."

She smiled at him in the mirror. "I just worry about not being able to tie it back. What if I get nervous?"

"You might. Not." They were both quiet for a moment. He hurried to change the subject. "What kind. Of adventures. Do you want?"

Clara turned to face him after she pinned her hat into place. "Like we had in Washington. Some days in New York, especially before Tommy was born, I felt so free. I had one day in London like that. Rose was still in at home in Yorkshire, and I could do anything I wanted."

Richard nodded and took her hand. "I had leave. In Paris. I saw an artist. I walked around the. City and ate things. I couldn't. Identify. I bought. Emma a present. It felt like. That." It felt like a day of beauty amidst the horror of the war, he thought.

"That's what I want. I want us to go places and have days together like that. I've never been to Paris, to France, to so many places."

"We could. Go," Richard pulled her down into his lap.

"You could go back?"

He considered it. "Yes."

"We could visit England if we go to Europe so you can meet Rose's family. I love her parents."

"Why didn't. You go to Paris. When you visited. Rose."

Clara turned to look at him. "I wasn't visiting Rose, and I had promised my father I wouldn't go to France."

Her answer was puzzling, but before he could ask they heard a heavy knock on the door.

"Harrow, it's Owen Sleater," an Irish accent announced. "I know Clara Thompson is inside."

Richard moved so fast she was barely aware of how she came to be standing behind him while he held the Colt.

"I'm not here to cause trouble. Mr. Thompson has been shot, and he's asking for Miss Thompson."

Clara barrelled past Richard to open the door. "Is he alright?"

Owen kept his hand on the gun holstered under his jacket. "He's asking for you," he repeated, keeping an eye on Richard.

Clara turned. Later, she wasn't quite sure what she had been about to say to Richard. That she loved him? That she'd be back soon? That she was scared and wanted him to come with her? At that moment, they were all true.

The words died stillborn on her lips, because when she turned Richard was looking down and away. She recognized all to well the look on his face. Guilt. Shame. In an instant, she knew. She knew. This was Jimmy.

And that Richard had taken her into his bed, taken her, knowing her father was going to be murdered. It felt like the air was pushed out of her body and she almost collapsed under the weight of the betrayal. She blindly reached for her purse, sitting on the desk, and brushed past Owen Sleater on her way out the door.

Richard raised his eye just enough to watch her walk out the door. He could still feel her all around him-the slight smell of orange in the air, the book she reading on the nightstand-but he knew.

Clara had just walked out his door for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clara went to Richard's at the end of last chapter to be with him, but also to reject all that goes with being Princess Clara, including the plotting her father and Jimmy are doing.
> 
> [The catalog of homes](https://www.flickr.com/photos/daily-bungalow/albums/72157646590737523) Richard and Clara look at.
> 
> Richard and Clara babysit Tommy so that Jimmy and Angela can see a play, [Nobody's Money](https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/nobodys-money-12607) In the show, we see Jimmy and Angela walk along the boardwalk after the show; it's when Jimmy sees Nucky with Waxey Gordon and the rest.
> 
> The only time Richard curses in the show is during the showdown with Lansky, Luciano, and Gordon's man. The only time ever. So I wanted to capture his feelings when he got home.
> 
> Comments are ALWAYS appreciated!


	22. The Monster Inside: June-July 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ANGST. SO MUCH ANGST. I thought Clara was missing from the Boardwalk Empire story because the Nucky/Jimmy/Eli feud would have been far more devastating if someone loved all of them and was hurt by the fallout. And then Clara went and fell for Richard, and, well...ANGST.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter covers events from "Two Boats and a Lifeguard" and "Battle of the Century", but the timeline is slightly different. The dream that starts the chapter is the season two trailer-you'll see where Clara belongs. Enjoy!

Nucky was lost in a familiar [dream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_C_c7oZacA&t=14s). It's always the same. He walks out of the Ritz, and people surround him, calling his name, wanting a piece of him. James, that fucking traitor, and Angela sit sipping lemonade. Lucy walks with that Prohie. The aldermen, Mickey, his New York associates all look at him ominously. Who can he trust. Who can he trust. Gillian and the Commodore ride past in a pushcart powered by Eddie. Eli pins a red carnation to his sheriff's uniform, just like his big brother's, Nucky thinks.

The crowd grows ever tighter around him. Chalky White strolls by on the ocean side of the Boardwalk, and then Harrow walks up the beach stairs with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He recoils from the sight of the man and almost overlooks Clara. She's wearing a blue dress, standing to the right of the stairs with her back to the ocean, looking up at the Ritz like she just realized something about the place she's called home since she was eight years old. As the crowd swirls, he loses track of her, his attention taken by Margaret, by Torrio's little troll, by James. He tries to find Clara in the mass of people moving around him. He expects to find her with James, but instead, he sees her standing with Harrow before he loses her again in the crowd's push, and then he's alone looking out at the ocean in the spot she was standing earlier.

Nucky startled awake. The smell of bleach was overwhelming, and his hand felt like it was on fire, like the night his father struck him with the fire poker for eating first. As he emerged from the haze, he saw a woman in a blue skirt and white shirtwaist staring out the window. The fair curls made him think for a moment that his mother was in the room with him. No, of course not, he thought.

"Clara," he said weakly, and she finally turned from the window.

"Father," she said after she sat in the chair next to him. "The doctor just left. He said it's a clean wound, you shouldn't have long term damage. In fact, you are set to go home tomorrow."

"Thank you for coming," he said as he looked at her closely. There was something in her voice he hadn't heard before, he thought, trying to remember the last time he'd seen her. He'd heard the typewriter at odd hours more than he'd actually seen his daughter since their fight on Memorial Day.

"I need to know," she said, her eyes huge and serious. "Tell me who did this."

"James. We were at the Jack Dempsey event, and James walked up to me and said, 'it doesn't make a difference if you're right or wrong. You just have to make a decision.' As soon as he walked away, the gunman ran up."

Clara choked out a cold, bitter laugh. "I see Jimmy's backbone is as strong as ever." She stared into the middle distance. "If it's all right, I'll move into Margaret's. I need to cut ties with the past, and I can't do that at the Ritz. It will just be until I can make concrete plans."

"What sort of plans?"

"Europe. I'll write the Grenvilles and ask to visit for a bit, start my European sojourn in the Yorkshire countryside."

Clara braced herself for an argument, but she was beyond caring about her father's objections to what she wished to do with her life. While she waited for him to wake up, while she measured the depth of Richard's betrayal, she'd started to make plans. How could she stay in Atlantic City without Richard, without Jimmy? This was even going to cost her Angela and Tommy, she thought. Luckily, she had more than enough money saved to get to Europe, and it wasn't like she was going to need that money now for houses and hardware stores. From everything she read, the cost of living on the Continent was so low, she'd be fine with the money she made from writing.

"I'd prefer you to stay until the trial is over."

She looked over at him." I thought you took care of that with the Attorney General ."

Nucky closed his eyes. "There have been complications."

Undone by his own cleverness, Clara thought. She cleared her mind and tried to identify the various puzzle pieces at play. "Harding's administration is in trouble," she said, remembering the news articles she'd read all month long. "They've cut you off, taken away your friendly prosecutor?"

He didn't answer her.

"How bad is it?" she asked in a chillingly empty voice.

"I don't know yet."

They sat in silence. Finally, Clara stood up and walked to the door. She paused before she walked out. "I asked-I begged-you to stop. I asked all of you."

He didn't respond. He didn't run his business on the whims of a girl, he thought, even if she was his daughter. Then something bit at his subconscious as the sleepiness from the pain medicine returned. "You didn't ask who the gunman was. Why didn't you ask if James sent Harrow?"

Clara didn't turn around. Because I asked Sleater what time you were shot, she thought. Because at that moment we were twisted into his bedsheets as my fingers were digging into Richard's back as I moaned his name into his ear as his breath was hot and wet on my face as his hand cupped my left breast as he pushed into me as my leg wrapped around his hip as...as he kept me busy and distracted and away from the event where the man I love as a brother sent someone to kill you.

How ironic, she realized. She loved Richard in part for his strong sense of loyalty. She'd just forgotten she wasn't the person to whom he was ultimately loyal.

"Because you're still alive," Clara answered.

* * *

Richard sat at the desk, his hands moving back and forth over the material of his pants. A familiar knock sounded on his door. It took him a few moments to get up to answer it.

The look on Richard's face told Jimmy everything he needed to know. Jimmy let out the breath he was holding. He walked into Richard's room. The quilt folded at the end of the bed, the copy of Dorothy Canfield's _The Brimming Cup_ on the bedside table, the small box of hairpins on the desk, they all spoke to the fact that Clara had all but moved in with Richard over the last few weeks.

Richard's mouth was pulling so hard that it took him time to get the first words out, and they were punctuated with throat clicks. "The Irishman. Came. He told. Clara. Nucky had. Been shot." At first, Richard meant to tell Jimmy the rest. The look of betrayal on Clara's face when she realized Jimmy had ordered her father killed, and that Richard knew, but he couldn't.

"You told. Me. You called. Mmm. Off the hit."

Jimmy closed his eyes. He had told Richard that, and he had meant it. He didn't want Nucky to die, not really. But then Ma pointed out how important it was he look like a leader, that he not backtrack in front of Capone, Luciano, and Lanksy.

'And that's why he dies?' he'd asked her.

Except, of course, Nucky didn't die. What a colossal fuck up.

"I couldn't, Rich. I couldn't look weak."

Richard thought of all the things Jimmy did that made him look weak. Not paying the butcher, not making sure Mickey was guarding the warehouse, having his mother around during meetings like they were after-school 4-H club gatherings. He wondered why Jimmy didn't have a problem with those things that made him look weak, which made him look like a boy playing a man's game.

After Jimmy left, Richard started to stand up but couldn't bring himself to move. Clara seemed to have marked every inch of the room. There was nowhere for his eye to land that did not speak of her presence and her absence.

* * *

Clara sat at the desk, forcing the words to flow from her fingertips. The book had to be finished, even if Nan and Bert and Flossie and Freddie's adventures felt like sandpaper in her mind. She refused to let any other part of her life be sacrificed up to this feud. She had lost almost everything she cared about in the world. Now she'd even exiled herself from her home, trapped the last few days in this landlocked room at Margaret's instead of peacefully alone in her room by the ocean.

The door opened without a knock, and Clara prepared to chastise Teddy for once more bursting in on her without warning.

Her father stood in the doorway, staring at her. Instantly, she knew something was wrong. Fear licked at her, and before she could push the thought away, she prayed that Richard, Jimmy, and Eli were safe.

"My father's dead," Nucky told his daughter.

Clara let out a deep breath. Thank goodness, she thought.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Died of a heart attack at the breakfast table," he replied.

Clara winced. "Oh, those poor kids," she said, thinking of her little cousins. "I'm sorry, Father. His death must be...emotionally complicated for you, and you already have so much going on."

Nucky almost laughed as he sat across from her in the slipper chair in front of the fireplace. Everyone else gave condolences and expected him to grieve, but Clara knew. It was emotionally complicated, and it was an inopportune time.

"You won't mourn him?"

Clara sighed. "He never missed a chance to say something about my mother, did he? What sort of man makes jokes about their mother's death to a child?" It's enough to make me pity you for your childhood, she thought.

"When I die, is that what your child will say to you, how emotionally complicated my death is for you?" Nucky asked.

For a moment, all she could do was look down at her hands. "When you were shot, I cast from my life everyone I deemed responsible. Without question. Without doubt."

Clara looked up, and the pain in her eyes almost took his breath away. He left without saying another word.

When she went down for lunch, Margaret expressed her condolences.

"We weren't close," Clara replied as she tried to eat. The cold jellied chicken bouillon was at least refreshing in the mounting mid-summer heat, but she couldn't force the stuffed tomato down around the knot in her stomach.

Margaret wanted to ask Clara about all of it, but the girl's defenses were so clearly raised that Margaret let it pass. Margaret had real problems, she thought, between Enoch's legal troubles and Emily's fever. Clara was an adult, she'd have to cope on her own. Instead, she told Clara that Emily was still running a low fever as Clara pretended to eat.

"Still not feeling well?" Clara asked when she walked through the living room after lunch and saw Emily lying on the sofa looking miserable.

"No one has time for me," Emily told her sadly.

Clara smiled. "That's a familiar feeling. Can I help?"

"I want to finish my book, but no one will read to me."

"I can do that."

Emily held her book.

" _The Tin Woodman of Oz ,_ " Clara said softly. Of course, out of all the children's books Emily could possibly be reading, it would be this one

"There's one more chapter. The Tin Woodman loves Nimmie Amee, but the Wicked Witch of the East cut off all his parts and replaced it with tin and he went away because he thought he couldn't love with her without a heart."

Clara forced her face still as the child chattered on

"The Tin Woodman met his old head and they talked. Then he meets the Tin Soldier. The Tin Soldier also loved Nimmie Amee, and the Witch cut him up, too. He doesn't have a heart, either, but he doesn't care. Now they are going to Nimmie's house, and who she loves best wins."

Without another word Clara opened the book. 

"We may be sure," she read, "that at this moment our friends were all anxious to see the end of the adventure that had caused them so many trials and troubles. Perhaps the Tin Woodman's heart did not beat any faster, because it was made of red velvet and stuffed with sawdust, and the Tin Soldier's heart was made of tin and reposed in his tin bosom without a hint of emotion."

When Clara finally recited 'the end' she stared down at the page, unable to look into Emily's big eyes.

"I thought the Tin Man and the girl were going to live happily ever after," Emily said sadly.

"I as well," Clara responded. She couldn't leave the child sick and heartbroken, so she reframed the ending. "But the Tin Woodman is with his best friend, the Scarecrow, and that's a happy ending of sorts."

"Is that where your Tin Man went? He wanted his best friend instead of you?" Emily asked.

For a moment, she wanted to laugh at the child's summation of the disaster of her life, but she held back. A smile, Clara thought, smile at the child and then escape to your room. "Yes. I need to go write, do you need anything?"

It was a few days later when Nucky called Clara into the conservatory. She could tell Margaret already knew the content of the upcoming discussion. The children's maid brought them down in their nightclothes and robes to say goodnight.

"Goodnight, Mama, Goodnight, Daddy," Emily and Teddy said in chorus. Clara startled slightly at the children not calling her father Uncle Nucky.

"Goodnight, kiddos," Nucky responded, and for a moment, Clara was back in the living room of the white clapboard house on Ventor, the one with four bedrooms her mother planned filling with children. Jimmy lived with them because Gillian was on tour with some company or couldn't take care of him or was chasing a man. Why didn't matter to Clara because the times Jimmy lived in the bedroom next to hers were the happiest of her childhood. They must have been six or so, and she could remember her mother bringing them down in their nightclothes to say goodnight to her father, while he sat in his sheriff's uniform writing at the desk. He'd said 'goodnight, kiddos' in the same tone of voice.

Well, after all, she thought, who needed the messy, disastrous adult versions of Jimmy and Clara when the sweet, innocent versions were available in Teddy and Emily? Why cope with the complex needs and desires of Nimmie Amee when the simpler companionship of the Scarecrow was available?

"Tomorrow I'm resigning as County Treasurer, effective immediately. I'm going to meet with the Commodore and James and tell them I'm done with this game. Clara, you'll need to pack up your room at the Ritz. I'll be giving up the eighth floor at the end of July. Plus, you should know, my money is tied up in a land deal and I just ended my income stream. We will all need to watch our spending."

Clara nodded. Her father was giving up the war, now. Jimmy had won. Her life was in tatters, but Jimmy had won.

"I can support myself," Clara said, and didn't miss her father's barely suppressed eye roll.

"You should also know that Owen Sleater and I are leaving for...England tomorrow afternoon."

"I could accompany you to Southampton," Clara proposed.

"No, I told you, I want you here until after my trial," Clara didn't respond, so Nucky pressed on. "Rebecca Spencer called the Ritz and asked you to a dinner and theater party tomorrow night. I told Eddie to accept on your behalf. So you know, Eddie will be taking vacation while Sleater and I are away."

Nucky was starting to miss the Clara who argued, he thought, when she sat primly in the chair and didn't say another word.

"You should also be aware there's a new prosecutor, Esther Randolph," he continued.

Clara looked up. "A woman prosecutor?" she asked with something like delight in her voice.

"Don't get excited. If she asks to see you, contact my lawyer."

Clara wanted to argue, tell him she had her own lawyer, but in the end, she didn't have the energy. She wished her father a good trip and forced her legs to carry her up the stairs.

The next night Clara dressed in a blue chiffon and bronze satin dinner dress. The skirt, she thought, was almost scandalously short, barely covering the top of her calves. She'd bought the dress for Dorothy Grenville's rehearsal dinner, and it came with a headpiece made up of more bronze flowers.

These people were supposedly her friends, Clara thought when she met up with everyone in the Ritz lobby, yet she barely knew any of them. They certainly didn't know her.

"My grandmother couldn't be happier with Mr. Harrow as a tenant," Rebecca told her as they walked to Babette's. "She said it's the first summer she's really enjoyed Maine because she knows he's watching after the house and taking care of the lawn."

Clara closed her eyes in an attempt to block out the image of Richard carefully cutting Mrs. Siddons's yard while she watched from the door. "That's nice to hear," she managed to say in response.

Rebecca and her husband, Jonathan, were in earnest conversation with Babette while the rest of the party waited in the foyer.

"Change of plans," Jonathan announced. "Babette's is closed for a private party, not that anyone bothered to call and tell us about the change in our reservation. We'll need to walk over to the Blenheim."

As they walked toward the door, something made Clara turn back towards the hostess stand, where Jimmy and Richard stood staring at her.

Since the moment she sat in her father's Buick (the backup car he liked to loan out to Atlantic City residents for funerals) next to Owen Sleater, it felt like her heart was overtaken by ice. Somewhere inside her, she knew, was an abyss of agony and anger, but it was more than she could stand. So she let the ice flow through her veins and numb her so she could cope.

The realization that Jimmy and Richard were standing with Babette because it was their party, that the reason no one contacted the Spencers was that Jimmy had only found out hours ago that her father was stopping the war (Clara realized in that instant that her father was a fucking liar and Jimmy was a fucking idiot because the war was far from over) and had just reached out to Babette about throwing his celebration slammed into her frozen reserve. Jimmy and Richard were wearing their everyday suits. They hadn't even taken the time to change into party clothes.

The ice began to melt.

"Rebecca, I need to speak with Jimmy. I'll meet up with you at the Blenheim, don't wait dinner on me."

Rebecca looked like she wanted to say something, but then just nodded and herded the rest of the party out the door. Clara had known Rebecca since they were six; she had never liked her more.

She turned and started walking back towards them. Jimmy was running his tongue across his bottom teeth. Richard looked between the floor and her with a mixture of pain and hope in his eye. For a moment her resolve faltered, and the desire to throw herself in his arms and accept whatever explanation he managed to give overtook her flared inside her. She knotted her hands into fists and pushed the feeling away. Not only had Richard's loyalty to Jimmy outweighed what was between them, but he had bedded her while Jimmy sent an assassin after her father.

"Mmm, Clara," Richard started to say.

Clara held up her hand and shook her hand. I'll get to you in a minute, she thought. Your betrayal hurt the most but isn't at the heart of this nightmare.

"Congratulations," she said to Jimmy in a cold voice.

"Clara," Jimmy said, recognizing the tone in her voice.

"You've ascended the throne of the Crown Prince of the Boardwalk and shown yourself to be the stupidest pawn on the chessboard all in the same day. That's talent, Jimmy."

"Nucky didn't die, Clara. It's over. There's no need..."

Clara tilted her head. "You know, perhaps Father was right about one thing. Perhaps you did run away to the Army because you couldn't hack Princeton. Because if you'd stayed a bit longer you would have read Emerson's refute to Oliver Wendell Holmes. 'When you strike at a king, you must kill him' because if you fail, you naive fool, the king doesn't hand over their kingdom to the upstart who hired an assassin from Woolworth's bargain bin who managed only to shoot them in the hand. The king plots the upstarts destruction. You are so blind you can't even see it. You've wandered into the zoo, opened the cages, let the animals out, and don't even realize the lions are circling their prey, just waiting for your first stumble."

"I didn't have a choice, I..."

"Needed to impress the troll from Chicago? Wanted to prove to Mommy what a big, strong man you are?"

"Nucky isn't who you think he is..."

Clara laughed, a bitter, choking laugh. "I know exactly what kind of corrupt bastard my father is. I also know exactly what kind of ...boy you are." Jimmy didn't answer her, so she pressed on. "You promised, Jimmy, you promised. And in the end, it wasn't worth as much as appearing momentarily like a player in a game I don't even think you comprehend.

"Enjoy your reign, Prince James. I fear it will rival that of Lady Jane Gray in terms of longevity."

When Clara turned away from Jimmy to face him, Richard could feel the anger and pain coming off her in waves. Her voice was barely above a whisper, and her face soft, like she was confiding in him while they curled around each other in bed.

"The gunman came from Chicago. There was time between when Jimmy decided to kill my father and when the man shot my father. You knew Jimmy had ordered my father dead, and you came home and just..." her voice broke, and she winced as she spoke. "Fucked me?"

He startled at her word choice, and he wanted to tell her, no, of course not. Jimmy had told him he changed his mind. Richard thought Nucky was safe, or as safe as any of them caught in this damn feud. But even at that moment, had he actually trusted Jimmy, or had he pushed away all doubt so he didn't have to choose?

Richard's lack of an answer was response enough for Clara. "I loved you for so many reasons. But from that first moment I met you in Chicago, you never treated me like I was less than an actual person. So how very ironic that in the end it was you who made me feel like a foolish, foolish girl. Just a woman, someone to bed and pass time with but not a whole person. Not someone worthy of your loyalty. It's not like I was someone important, like Jimmy."

Clara turned and looked back at Jimmy and let her voice raise slightly. "That's something you actually could learn from Jimmy, Richard. I must give him this much-he is extraordinarily loyal to the woman he beds. He listens to her council, he lets her whisper in his ear, and he'd never keep something like this from her."

Richard turned his face enough to look at her. Clara was not describing Jimmy's relationship with his wife. Angela knew nothing about her husband's dealings, Richard thought. The only woman Jimmy listened to, even though she was the person Richard wished he wouldn't, was Gillian. He looked back and forth between Clara and Jimmy, as usual in discomfort when Clara brought up Gillian to Jimmy.

"Fuck you, Clara," Jimmy spat at her.

"Oh, did I go too far? You can send a gunman to kill my father, but your bitch of a mother is off-limits?" Clara asked. "You destroy my life, but still expect me to protect your secrets?"

"Did you just come to ruin my party?"

"Ruin your party?" Clara shook her head. "Your downfall is going to be delicious."

"Would you be this upset if I'd been successful?" Jimmy asked, already knowing the answer.

She turned and walked away, the ice melting so fast she was afraid they'd hear her sobs before she got far enough away. Her father's careful training held, though, and she managed to rejoin the Spencers' theater party at the Blenheim shortly before the main course was served. She managed a few polite bites.

In October of the same year, Clara sat in the second row of the Klaw Theater on West 45th Street with another group of people she didn't particularly care for, watching the same play on opening night. She'll have no memory of seeing _Lillies of the Field_ in its first week of out of town tryouts, nor of crying so hard when Mildred lost everyone she loved that Rebecca Spencer never forgot it. It was the first time she had ever seen Clara Thompson cry, even though they'd known each other since first grade.

Jimmy would later think that Clara had cursed him with her words that night. Richard spent the evening against the arm of the sofa in the VIP room, looking shellshocked. Jimmy tried cheering him up. He told Richard that the success was as much his as it was Jimmy's. He told Richard, fuck Clara. There was a nice girl out there for Richard, someone to settle down with.

The look on Richard's face when he said that stayed with Jimmy for a long time. That's when he got angry. He wanted to tell Richard he'd lost things, too. He'd loved Nucky and Clara his whole life. Then Eli pounded the same drum, saying Nucky's retreat was just a trick. Seriously, fuck all the Thompsons, Jimmy thought. And it was the Thompsons' fault he bungled dealing with the butcher, because he was so angry he wasn't thinking straight It's why he ended up throwing Mickey Doyle off the balcony at Babette's straight to the feet of Manny Horvitz, butcher.

It was a miscalculation.

After Clara left with Owen Sleater that awful night, Richard had put away some of her things. The book she left out, the quilt, the extra pillow. If Clara wasn't there, he didn't want to enjoy the little comforts she'd brought with her. When he got back to his room the night of Jimmy's party, he forced himself to deal with the rest of her things. There was one dress in the closet. Clara had brought it the day before she left, he remembered. She'd been happy, because it was her favorite, and she'd sent it to a seamstress to have it shortened. It was the floral dress she'd worn that day on the Boardwalk when she'd brought him a picnic and seemed so happy to see him in her city. He carefully folded it and put it in the drawer, his fingers touching the fabric for the first time. The soap she left in the bathroom, he carefully wrapped in paper before putting in the top drawer with the rest of her things, knowing soon his room would stop smelling of oranges.

Finally, he went to his own dresser and opened the drawer with his winter things, pulling a velvet box from underneath the flannels. For a moment, he saw the life he thought they were going to have. A life where he wasn't lonely, where someone was happy to see him when he got home. He sat holding the box for a long time, his thumb running over the velvet, mourning the life lost so that Jimmy could rule an empire built out of sand.

* * *

Clara knew how to observe the properties. It's why she stood in all black at the Saint Bernard Clairvaux cemetery in Dorothy. It wasn't love for her grandfather that led her to the Jersey mainland on a summer Saturday morning.

Her uncle's eyes were on her from almost the moment she parked her father's Buick and stepped across the first grave, but Clara attempted to ignore him. She regarded her cousins thoughtfully. Poor little lambs, they looked so upset, she thought. How was it possible they loved their grandfather so much while she found him so despicable?

Aunt June invited her for lunch after the internment, but she refused the invitation. Clara could not eat at her uncle's table, now.

"Dollface," Eli murmured, approaching her as the mourners dispersed.

"Don't. Don't. Not after what you were part of," Clara looked at him with fierce anger in her eyes.

Fuck Jimmy, Eli thought. How do you fuck up sending a gunman? His words to Harrow stood, he thought, because he still believed they would all be better off with Nucky gone.

"So you've written us all off?" Eli asked.

Clara's eyes flashed. "You all conspired to have my father killed. What should I do?"

He regarded her thoughtfully. Clara was the first kid he'd watched grow up. When he and June were courting, they'd go eat dinner at Nuck and Mabel's, and then they'd play with Clara. Eli always thought he fell in love with June in part because she was so natural with Clara. It made him see what a good mother she'd be to their children. It's why he could see how the pain tearing at his niece was destroying her, and why the anger in Clara's eyes cut him so deeply.

"It was Jimmy," he said, hoping for forgiveness.

"Try that line on Father. Jimmy can barely decide what pastry to order at Formica Brothers. Someone led him into this." Clara stared into the trees, seeing the man in the Ford without realizing it. "It was that awful little troll from Chicago, wasn't it? He pushed Jimmy into this."

Capone, sure. He wondered why Clara despised him. "Yes, he pushed Jimmy into it." It wasn't even strictly a lie, Eli thought, looking at the church steeple behind Clara's head. Jimmy pushed back against him, but once Capone, the little one, and the one who was screwing Gillian started in, Jimmy folded fast.

"It doesn't change anything," Clara said. "The three of you...you still conspired to kill my father."

"Harrow, too?" Eli asked, thinking of the broken man sitting in the VIP room at the party.

Clara shot her uncle a venomous look. "Do you think I don't know what Richard's part in this was, to keep me occupied while the gunman did his work? Do you want to know how he kept me busy?"

"Clara, that's a sin," Eli said in a shocked voice. She was his niece. He often had to remind himself she wasn't an eight-year-old in a crinoline. The last thing he wanted was to picture...that. Although he was suddenly possessed by the urge to ask her if she made Harrow keep the mask on.

"That's a sin?" Clara asked with a hysterical note of laughter in her voice. "You conspired to kill your brother, my life is paid for by a river of blood and illegal booze, but my bedding a man I," her voice broke, but she forced herself to continue, "love, that's the sin that worries you?"

"It's not true, Clara," Eli said, thinking if nothing else, he could spare her that pain. "There were three men in that room who love you, but Harrow was the only one who was thinking about you. He tried to convince Jimmy not to order the hit, and..." Eli skipped over the point where Harrow had asked him how he could kill his brother, and focused instead on what Jimmy told him later, "he thought he had succeeded."

Clara's hands went out behind her, and she leaned against a headstone. Richard hadn't betrayed her in the way she thought. Guilt for the things she had said, for the things she had felt, crashed over her. He still had known what Jimmy and Eli were considering, and she felt a new flame of anger start inside her. He hadn't put her first and let his loyalty to Jimmy overcome any commitment he should feel for her. Richard should have told her. But he hadn't betrayed her, not like she thought. Not in a way she couldn't forgive.

"I said horrible things. Unforgivable things," Clara said softly.

"Dollface, your aunt and I say unforgivable things to each other at least once a month. Then we go out to the garage and makeup."

Clara made a face. "Ugh, I didn't need to know that."

"Oh, I had to picture my niece with the masked man, but you didn't need to hear that?" Clara looked up and smiled at him and then fought back the urge to cry.

"What's Father going to do now, Uncle Eli? To you, to Jimmy? Jimmy thinks he's won, but..."

"Jimmy is an idiot," Eli answered. "Our best bet might be the lady prosecutor."

Clara nodded slowly. She still felt like she was being ripped in half. How could she do it? How could she want her father to go to prison, and from the undercurrents, she gathered it was much more severe than election-rigging now.

Clara and Eli were so intent on their conversation they failed to notice the man in the Ford snapping pictures with his Brownie camera.

* * *

It was a warm summer Saturday afternoon, two days before July 4th, and almost everyone was happy and excited.

After all, it was the afternoon of the fight of the century.

Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky were checking into the Fairmount in Jersey City when the clerk handed Charlie a message.

"Fuck Darmody. That fucking little pissant. The butcher went up to New York and found Benny," Charlie said in a voice he thought was his quietest. It still caused Meyer to pull him aside, after casting a worried look at the high rolling gamblers AR had invited down for the fight standing in the lobby who were looking at the enraged Charlie.

"We've got to get back to Atlantic City, Charlie. Who is going to tell AR?" Meyer answered.

"Fuck Darmody," Charlie said again before pushing the task of talking to Rothstein off on Meyer. He wanted to watch Dempsey pummel Georges Carpentier from the front row, god damn it, not listen to it from fucking Atlantic City. Not even the idea of screwing Gillian in that creepy old bastard's house with Jimmy, Capone, Harrow, Thompson's odd brother, and the rest in the other room made him want to spend any more fucking time in Atlantic City.

Meyer started speaking soothing words to Charlie as they drove off in the Oldsmobile, trying to calm him down so he wouldn't beat the hell out of Darmody on sight.

* * *

At the beach house, Jimmy watched Richard closely. As usual, these days, his head was hanging down, and his hands fretted across the material of his pants. Damn Clara, Jimmy thought, absolving himself of any part of the catastrophe.

"Rich, what is it?" Jimmy asked finally.

"What happened at Babette's," Richard managed to get out.

Jimmy purposefully misunderstood. "With Doyle? It was just a gag. Besides, it will keep him in line."

"Mmm. That's not. What I meant. You said. A nice. Girl and. I would. Settle. Down," Richard tried to explain, but with each word, speaking became more difficult, and his facial tic worsened.

"You will. You'll see," Jimmy interrupted as he heard the car containing Waxey Gordon and his associates.

Richard looked at him. A miracle had happened, Richard thought, a nice girl loved him, but now she thought he had used her to help Jimmy succeed.

"Why. Did you. Make fun of me?" Richard asked.

"Rich, I wasn't." Jimmy heard the car door close. "Look, fuck Clara. She's hardly the only girl in the world, okay?"

Richard recoiled, but it didn't stop him from standing behind Jimmy's shoulder as Waxey Gordon came in, and it didn't stop him from doing everything he could to help Jimmy make the deal for Waxey to take care of the butcher once and for all.

* * *

The drive from Dorothy to Atlantic City was miserable in the best of times. Her father had been nattering about a road deal since she returned from D.C., and Clara felt a sudden surge of goodwill for the project. It was a long time to be alone with her thoughts as the merciful numbness she'd mostly been encased in dissipated, and the raw agony of the last eight days bit at her. She thought through everyone she knew, everyone she loved, in Atlantic City, and realized the only person she trusted absolutely was Angela. Clara felt a rush of shame. She hadn't even checked on Angela or Tommy because she'd been so wrapped up in her own heartbreak.

Her fingers drummed the steering wheel. Her temper, her impetuousness, could get her into trouble, mostly when she acted without thinking. And she'd been wrong if Uncle Eli was telling the truth, and Clara couldn't see a reason why he would lie about Richard's involvement. She still had things to be angry about, she thought, but...it was survivable. But she needed to talk to him, she needed to apologize, she needed to stop talking and let him tell her in his own words what the hell happened.

The Ford was parked by in Mrs. Siddons's driveway, and Clara's heart skipped a beat. She was breathless when she knocked on the door. There was no answer. Something drove her to try and find Richard now, the same feeling she'd had Memorial Day. A note, she decided, she should leave a message. She ran back to the Buick, only to realize she had her smallest day bag and no paper or pen. There was none in the Buick, either. Clara sighed in frustration.

The Ritz, she thought. She'd go home, change out of the funeral clothes she was wearing, write Richard a letter, leave it here, and go find him. The idea of escaping into the peace of the Ritz was delightful. She could think there.

Unfortunately, the lobby of the Ritz was complete chaos. Clara looked around in shock. Granted, it was July 4th weekend, and the Dempsey fight was tonight, but never, in all the years she'd lived there, had she seen the Ritz coming apart like this. There were angry guests scattered across the lobby with their luggage. Other angry people poured from the restaurant. Clara picked her way through to the elevators, where people were lined up to get on.

When she finally got on, she was shocked to see the Ritz's assistant manager, Mr. Donaldson, instead of Leroy or one of the other elevator operators at the controls.

"Miss Thompson," he said as he started the elevator with a jerk. When the last guest departed the elevator on the seventh floor, Clara took her chance.

"What's happening?" she asked quietly.

"Oh, there's just some problem with the colored workers this afternoon.Nothing for you to worry about," he said in an attempt to be jovial. The last thing he needed, he thought, was for Miss Thompson to reach out to her father and tell him what a mess the Boardwalk was on this, the most profitable weekend of the year.

Father, Clara saw suddenly. It was how he planned to undermine Jimmy. He was going to cripple the city. He was going to bankrupt the Boardwalk during the height of tourist season when everyone made their money.

He was going to destroy Jimmy at any cost, even if the entirety of Atlantic City was collateral damage, she realized. As she stumbled past a pile of newspapers by the front door of the suite, she could see Chalky White waiting to speak to her father. Of course, she thought. Mr. White would still be livid at Jimmy, and understandably so, about the stupidity the Commodore talked Jimmy into.

She turned back and grabbed the top newspaper. The Dempsey fight! Jimmy would be at the radio presentation, and doubtlessly Richard would be with him. Clara started to run out of the suite before she realized she was still in her funeral clothes. No, she thought, she couldn't show up looking like a wraith. Turning around, she kicked off her black shoes and started unclipping her stockings as she raced to her room.

* * *

He was going to be good at running Atlantic City, Jimmy thought as Richard drove them to the theater. The deal with George Remus? Fucking perfect. It was going to be a game-changer. They were going to make money at levels Nucky never even dreamed of. And Clara had done him a favor, mocking him about his mother. Running things out of his house, without his mother's interference or the Commodore randomly shouting, was better. Made him look like a grown-up. Made people respect him. Even if he had had to send Tommy and Angela away for the weekend.

The botched hit on Nucky wasn't the end of the world. People saw he was willing to act, even if the act hurt. The butcher was about to learn that lesson, courtesy of Waxey Gordon. Courtesy of him. No one was going to harass him, certainly not some crazed meat cutter.

Richard stared straight ahead as they drove. Jimmy sighed. He hadn't wanted Clara and Richard to get hurt. If Clara wasn't so fucking stubborn, Jimmy thought. Richard might really be better off without her. Fuck, Jimmy realized, he didn't even believe that. But Clara always forgave him anything. She knew Nucky's crime. Tomorrow, as soon as he woke up, he was going to get a message to her. He'd talk until she understood. He'd tell her Richard was innocent, that he had made a mistake, that he needed her help to do this. That Angela needed her help. That Richard needed her. But first, he and Richard were going to enjoy tonight.

* * *

B. F. Keith's Garden Pier Theatre was packed. People from all walks of life had paid $2.50 a ticket to listen to Dempsey wallop the Frenchman as it happened over one hundred miles away in Jersey City. Neither Richard nor Jimmy were having as much as fun as they hoped. Jimmy felt like everyone kept turning to stare at him, and Richard picked up on his anxiety, which made his inherent watchfulness kick up several notches. When Jimmy received a note reading 'I'm watching you,' Richard almost suggested leaving.

Clara smoothed her dress as she worked her way to the box office. She'd bought it on that trip to Bonwit Teller because it reminded her of the dress she'd worn the night before Angela and Jimmy married. After all, that was a happy night. It consisted of a dark green slip with a green tulle overdress decorated with copper embroidery. She thrown it on, applied dark lipstick, and was back out the suite and calling for the elevator within minutes. A far cry, she reflected, from the time she and Angela had spent getting ready that night six months ago. Only six months ago, and yet an entire lifetime seemed to have passed.

When she tried to buy a ticket, the box office attendant they were sold out. Clara closed her eyes and then did the thing she always tried to avoid. "My name is Clara Thompson. You might know my father, Nucky? And I'm here to meet my oldest friend, Jimmy Darmody?" An usher was dispatched to take her to Jimmy.

"We got dressed all by ourselves, too," the brunette said as she starting climbing in Jimmy's lap.

Richard was uncomfortable. Not only because of the people around him who kept looking at him but because he liked Angela. He didn't understand why Jimmy needed other women when he had someone like Angela waiting at home. Then the red-haired girl gasped at his face, and Jimmy rushed to his defense. He's with me, Jimmy said, as if that took care of everything.

"We're having fun here, Rich," Jimmy said. "Clara ended things with you, no need to feel guilty."

Next thing he knew, the redhead said he'd be a good story for when she was old and climbed into his lap.

Clara's eyes raced around the theater. Suddenly she saw Jimmy with some chorus girl on his lap. Jesus, she thought, he really is turning into my father. Poor Angela.

"There he..." she started to say to the usher when the dark-haired girl in Jimmy's lap moved, and she saw a flash of green tweed next to him. A man in a green tweed suit with a girl in his lap, sharing an awkward kiss. Awkward because, as she knew all too well, learning to kiss around the mask wasn't intuitive. And this woman was kissing him like it was a task and not a pleasure.

Clara gasped, which made Jimmy look up from the girl in his lap.

"Mr. Darmody," the usher said, "this girl said she's here to see you."

The usher's voice knocked Clara back into reality, and she turned and fled.

"Clara!" Jimmy called, once again knowing he had somehow fucked up badly. "Clara, goddamn it!"

Meyer was ready to be out of the car. Not one but two tires had blown on the never-ending drive from Jersey City back to Atlantic City. Charlie hadn't exactly coped well. He'd started complaining before they'd gotten in the car and hadn't fucking stopped yet. Now Meyer wanted to punch Darmody senseless, just as payback for this car ride from hell.

"We've spent so much fucking time in this seaside shantytown I know how to get to this damn theater street-side," Charlie groused as they pulled up.

Clara's first instinct was to run back to the Boardwalk and flee to the Ritz. Then she realized that's exactly what Jimmy thought she would do, so she turned and ran for the theater's street-side exit.

First, Jimmy had to get the brunette out of his lap, and then he had to get his leg to cooperate. By the time he could move, Clara was disappearing through the exit door.

He turned back to the seats. "Richard, come on!"

Richard sat, staring straight ahead. The look of pain on Clara's face. He had done that. He had done that. 

At Jimmy's order, he made himself stand and follow behind him.

Jimmy started to go out of the exit to the Boardwalk but then realized Clara would anticipate he would think she would go that way. He turned and went towards the street-side door, cursing his bad leg as they went.

Clara took a large gulp of salty air when she made it outside. Pain sliced through her. She knew men cheated. She'd watched them come into her home with their mistresses and then come to dinner the next night with their wives. Hell, when engaged to Darcy, she'd cheered herself with the thought that he would probably take a mistress quickly and leave her alone.

But Richard. She'd never expected Richard...she closed her eyes to hold back the tears. Not because she didn't think no one would want him, she certainly wanted him, but because she thought he was loyal.

And he was, just not to her. Because apparently she deserved no one's loyalty.

"Clara Thompson, what the fuck is wrong with you?" a voice heavy with the accent of New York tenements asked.

Clara opened her eyes. Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lanksy were staring at her while standing next to an Oldsmobile.

"Clara!" Jimmy's voice called out.

Fuck it all, Clara thought. Let everyone else know how this feels.

"Charlie, remember when you said you owned me a favor?"

"Sure," Charlie replied.

She swallowed hard and then found her voice. "Kiss me."

He leered at her for a moment and then moved fast to throw her back against the cement column holding up the awning outside the theater. Her head smashed into the cement, and for a moment, she welcomed the pain. Charlie kissed her like their mouths were at war, and at one point, he sucked so hard on her tongue she thought it was going to rip out of her mouth.

She was distantly aware of voices, of the sound of running, and she knew Jimmy and Richard were there. Charlie mercifully pulled back.

Clara turned away. "Get me out of here," she whispered.

Charlie looked at her, and then he looked at Darmody's angry face and Harrow's horrified face. With fucking pleasure, he thought.

"Charlie," Meyer said with a warning in his voice. Clara Thompson and her fake brother Jimmy Darmody shared one trait in common, Meyer thought. They made every damn situation they were in a thousand times more complicated than it needed it to be.

"I'm going to help a lady out," Charlie replied, walking Clara around to the Oldsmobile's passenger side.

Clara covered her face with her hands, but her shoulders were shaking so severely that everyone could see she was sobbing.

"Well," Charlie said, turning to face Darmody and Harrow, "You two have certainly screwed absolutely fucking everything up. I'm going to take her home, and then meet everyone at Babette's.

Richard stared because, as Luciano spoke, all he could see was Clara's lipstick smeared on the corner of the man's mouth.


	23. Woman's Work-July 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara must confront a problem on her own; Angela tells Clara what she really thinks; a new woman appears in Clara's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've rearranged the timeline a bit for the episodes "Fight of the Century" and "Georgia Peaches."

The sound of sobbing woke Margaret up with a start. Emily, she thought, as she ran to her children's room, not bothering to pick up her robe. She opened the door, but Emily was sleeping like a princess, still tucked in under the covers. Teddy's covers were half on the floor, and he was on his stomach, but he was also well and sound asleep. She stepped back into the hallway and realized the sound was coming from downstairs. Katy, Margaret thought with a sigh, doubtlessly being dramatic about Owen being away. She went back and put on her robe and slippers before submitting to her duty and going downstairs. Sometimes, she thought, it was doubtful if live-in servants were worth the trouble.

Margaret followed the sound into the conservatory, but instead of seeing Katy's dark hair and working girl robe, she saw a blonde in a green party dress curled against the back wall with her face in her hands.

"Clara," Margaret called, unsure if she should go to her or not. Since they'd traveled together to New York to obtain family limitation devices, Clara had been friendlier. However, she still had never confided in Margaret, carefully protecting her inner life behind a wall of polite manners. Clara was more her father's daughter than she'd like to admit, Margaret thought.

Even now, when Margaret knew Clara's heart must be broken by the turmoil of the people she loved-The Tin Man, Jimmy Darmody, even her uncle-attempting to have her father killed, Clara's reserve remained intact, although the life seemed to have gone out of her. Clara drifted around the house politely, spending time with Emily who was still battling a fever, making small talk at the table. Even when her grandfather died, Clara had treated attending the funeral as no more than another outing she endured as Enoch Thompson's daughter.

But now, after not seeing Clara since she left for her grandfather's funeral that morning, she lay in a heap in an expensive dress. Clara had only been Teddy's age when her mother died, Margaret recalled. The only maternal figures she'd had since were Gillian Darmody and Nucky's companions. Margaret shuddered at the idea of any girl being mothered by the likes of Lucy and remembered how badly she'd ached for her mother during her first heartbreak.

"There, there. Whatever is the matter?" Margaret slid onto the floor next to her and patted her back, in the same manner she used when Teddy or Emily cried.

Some small part of Clara was mortified that Margaret was seeing her lose control like this, but the weight on her chest was so heavy and the storm of emotions-guilt, anger, remorse, grief- inside of her raged beyond her ability to control it.

"Tell me," Margaret said.

Clara rubbed her eyes and tried to take a deep enough breath to stop the sobs. How could she explain it? How could she explain that Jimmy was her oldest love, that she couldn't remember life without him, that his betrayal felt like a knife through her heart?

How could she explain she lay in bed at night and missed the press of Richard's body against hers, the way that when he would wake up he inevitably would pull her closer, or the feel of his stubble against her forehead? How could she explain she missed the way he always remembered exactly how she liked her coffee, or the way he listened to her talk without making her feel foolish, or the way he could be around her while she wrote, even though she couldn't bear for anyone else to be near her while she worked?

How could she explain that Richard felt like home, and nothing had felt like home since her mother died?

How could she put into words the feeling when she thought he had twisted her desire for him into something for Jimmy's stupid fucking coup, a way to make her almost complicit in the plot against her father? How could she explain the relief and new flash of anger when she found out Jimmy had lied to Richard?

And yet, when the shape of her father's new plan against Jimmy made itself clear to her, one that would sink Atlantic City, she ran without thought to tell him.

How could she explain what she felt when she saw that girl in Richard's lap? That, after all, Richard wasn't any different from any other man in Atlantic City.

And how was she supposed to explain the feeling when she saw Charlie Luciano, like someone had set a stick of dynamite in front of her and she looked down and realized she had a match in her hand? She wanted to hurt everyone at that moment, and seeing Charlie felt like a deliverance. So she lit the match.

Unfortunately, kissing him felt like kissing a hoover, something she told him on the car ride back to Margaret's. He told her he hadn't any other complaints, but then had handed her his handkerchief and tried to make her laugh by telling her stories of his sexual escapades.

She was still crying. At the moment, she felt like she was never going to stop.

"Is this your first heartbreak?" Margaret asked, trying to ease Clara into talking.

"No. During the war, there was a man. I...we didn't have long, and then we were separated. And I just let it happen." Clara felt that older pain resurface, pain she had worked hard to push down. "Afterwards, I just felt numb. I felt numb for so long."

That horrible year in D.C., when dinosaur bones were her only friends. When Jimmy's pain and anger were so deep as he lay at Walter Reed that he never noticed she was drowning. It's why she accepted her father's plea she marry Darcy Blaine, she realized. She didn't have enough energy, enough fight, to say no.

But she had written her way out of it. The pirate novel she never showed anyone. Terrible, but it made her break out of her melancholy, and then she just kept writing. She started getting jobs. It broke through the ice enough to make her fight her father openly when Jimmy was banished, and she plotted to find out where Jimmy was.

By the time she met Richard, she felt alive again.

Margaret got up when Clara stopped speaking and returned with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Clara poured the liquor down her throat, enjoying the burn.

"For me, it was the solicitor's son. Ah, but he was beautiful, and when I realized he wanted me," Margaret began. When she finished the story she wiped tears from her eyes. "I never felt like that again, I never thought I was going to, until..."

Clara blinked and looked over at her. She wouldn't have thought Margaret felt like that. "Until my father?"

Margaret startled, as she had been thinking about how she hadn't felt like that again until Owen Sleater set his mouth on hers. She could hardly say that to Enoch's daughter.

"Of course," Margaret poured more whiskey into Clara's glass. "Do you want to talk about Mr. Harrow?"

Yes, Clara thought. I want someone to know how badly I hurt, why it's so bad. But I can't tell you, I can't tell anyone, because everyone I love is against someone else I love and I feel like I'm on a lifeboat in the middle of a storm and I'm tired of rowing.

Clara shook her head no, so Margaret kept refilling Clara's glass as she told her stories about Ireland.

* * *

The sound of running feet and hushed, urgent voices woke Clara up from a dreamless sleep. The first thing she was aware of was that her head felt like the ocean itself was slamming against it. Her throat felt like she had swallowed sandpaper, and her limbs felt heavy and odd. She sat up, unsure where she was. Not her bedroom, not Richard's, not the guest room at Margaret's. Margaret, she thought. Margaret had listened to her cry, poured a bottle of whiskey down Clara's throat, and then dragged Clara upstairs to her own bed. Clara stretched, her green party dress and stockings feeling dirty and tawdry after sleeping in them.

The noises from the hall penetrated her hungover haze. Something's wrong, she thought, and scenarios ranging from something happening to Jimmy and Richard to her father's steamship sinking flashed through her mind. She stumbled out into the hallway. The young brunette maid stood uncertainly near the top of the stairs like she wasn't sure what she should be doing.

"Katy?" Clara asked after she searched for her name.

"Oh, miss," Katy said. "It's Emily. She can't move her legs."

Clara raced as best she could on rubbery legs to the children's bedroom. Dr. Surran stood over Emily's bed, and the look of terror on Margaret's face ripped at her heart.

"We need to get her to the hospital immediately," the doctor said in a carefully low voice that scared Clara more than it would have if he were screaming.

"I can't drive," Margaret said helplessly.

"I can," Clara replied. The doctor and Margaret turned to stare at her, in her slept-in party dress and curls tumbling from the pins she hadn't removed the night before. "Give me five minutes."

Once more, Clara unclipped her stockings while she ran. She grabbed the first skirt and blouse she laid her hands on and clean underthings before running into the bathroom so she could at least throw water on her face.

As she dashed from her room, she realized the Buick was still at the Ritz. She'd left it there and walked to the Garden Pier to find Jimmy and Richard (what a marvelous decision that turned out to be, she thought, and felt a flicker of pain), and when that turned into a catastrophe, Charlie Luciano had driven her back to Margaret's house. She hadn't thought of the Buick again until now.

"Katy, did my father or Mr. Sleater leave the keys to the Rolls?" Clara asked as she ran for the stairs. Katy nodded.

Eddie Kessler had taught Jimmy and her to drive back in 1914, in the Rolls. It had been a harrowing experience. She'd much preferred driving when her father bought a Ford as a backup vehicle. Clara cast off the fear. Something was desperately wrong with Emily. Margaret was terrified. She could manage to drive the blue menace.

Margaret climbed into the back seat before Dr. Surran carefully handed Emily to her mother. Emily started to cry out of fear.

"None of that, Princess Ozma," Clara said from the driver's seat, working to keep her voice light while her head continued to pound and she tried to remember the order to twist the levers to start the car. "We are off on a hot air balloon ride."

Please, Clara thought, please may a good witch intervene on Emily's behalf.

Clara scratched the passenger side running boards terribly as she pulled in to the hospital, where nursing sisters took Emily from her mother. Margaret and Clara were whisked upstairs to a floor labeled "Infectious Disease" and Clara felt a new sickness claw at her. She held Margaret's hand silently, unable to imagine any words that would make any of it okay.

It felt like an eternity and yet all too soon that Dr. Surran came for them, and showed them a glass door where more sisters were holding Emily down. The man's words rushed over Clara, but she understood the incoming horror and her heart broke in a new way.

They thought it was polio, and the only way to test was to put in a needle in the girl's spine. Margaret wasn't even allowed in the room to hold her daughter.

It's why she didn't believe in God, Clara thought. She knew all too well the horrors of a loving father could inflict on his children. But Emily. Emily wasn't even five years old.

As Margaret sank to the floor with the sound of Emily's screams from behind the glass door growing ever louder, Clara sank with her and tried to block the memory of the sounds of another, far away hospital.

* * *

"I've never thought of you as a hysterical young woman," Dr. Surran began.

"Good, neither have I," Clara responded, wondering if men were taken away at a certain age and taught that lecturing, hectoring tone they loved to use when speaking with women.

He handed her papers. "You'll need to direct the staff. You have polio in the house. There are certain ways that things must be cleaned, and of course, the children's things will need to be burned."

Burned, Clara thought.

Katy and Teddy both sat on the porch when she arrived back at the house, and she wasn't sure who looked more anxious.

"Is Emily going to die?" Teddy asked.

Clara kneeled down. Although she typically found Teddy to be a distasteful child, she knew the agony of being a child watching their family disappear around them.

"Of course not. The next few days are going to be very hard on everyone, though, but we are going to muddle through. Can you go play in the yard?" Standing up she looked at Katy. "I need to speak to the rest of the staff."

"They're gone, miss. They didn't want to catch..."

Clara stared down at the papers in her hand. The staff was gone, save for Katy. Okay. She walked inside and went to the telephone, calling the front desk of the Ritz. They'd find people willing to help her clean the house, and she'd make sure they were well rewarded for their work and risk.

The phone rang and rang without answer. The chaos of the lobby the night before came back to her and she slowly hung the phone up. The situation must have worsened. A strike? At the height of tourist season? So many people made their money for the year in these months, she knew. She felt sick again but forced herself to focus.

She wanted Richard. She knew in her bones she could call him and he would help her without question, even after the debacle of last night. He would know how to start a fire, he would know how to mix the disinfectant solution. Teddy would be happy to see him. He would make her feel like things might be okay. Clara shook off the feeling. Their relationship was in ruins; she couldn't ask him for help, for comfort.

Jimmy was just as lost to her, calling Angela would endanger Tommy, Eli and June were off-limits for the same reasons. Eddie was vacationing, her father and Owen Sleater in England.

There was no one, Clara thought. No one could help her. She sat on the stairs and read the papers the doctor gave her, trying to make sense of the directions.

"Katy, is there a bathroom downstairs near the kitchen?"

"Yes. A bedroom, too, for the cook."

"Okay, I want you and Teddy to go downstairs and stay. I might have some questions..." Because I've never cleaned anything in my whole stupid life, Clara thought.

Following the instructions, Clara ripped a clean pillowcase apart and tied it around her nose and mouth before she found baskets and started gathering toys. Basket after basket of blocks, books, dolls were dumped into a pile on the back lawn. When she found Emily's favorite doll her resolve buckled and she almost hid the doll away. After all, she thought, what if Emily dies? Margaret would have nothing left that the child loved. But what if the doll was the reason someone else sickened, she thought? It went into the basket.

After the toys and books were all on the yard, she pulled down the drapes and gathered the clothing. It was hot, and the fabric over her nose and mouth stuck terribly to her face and made it difficult to breathe. Clara struggled to get the mattress off the bed, and fought to drag it down the hallway to the stairs.

Clara felt her hair slipping out the haphazard pinning job she had done that morning. Her shoulders ached, her legs were sore from the repeated trips up and down the stairs, and her head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. She wanted someone to come save her, she realized. Well, she told herself, the cavalry's not coming as she started pulling the mattress off of Emily's bed.

"You are not going to best me," she said to the mattress when it caught on the stair railing and gave it one hard shove that sent the mattress and herself down the stairs, where they landed in a tumble. Clara stood up, took a deep breath, and pulled the mattress to its funeral pyre. And then did it again, with Teddy's mattress.

For the first time in weeks, months, her mind wasn't strumming in fear and pain about Jimmy and his damn coup or her heartbreak over Richard. She was too tired, too scared, too sore to do anything more than just push through. Over and over she read the instructions from the hospital, terrified she would miss something, that someone would sicken because of her lassitude. She found the Lysol and a bucket and mixed it at the recommended strength and began scrubbing the bed frames.

Finally, it was dark outside and she knew it was cool enough to start the fires. Please don't let me burn the house down, Clara thought as she filled bucket after bucket with water. In the garage, she found a can of gasoline and poured some over the children's toys before lighting a match and throwing it.

One side of the fire seemed like it was going to rage out of control. Clara ran back to the greenhouse for a shovel and rake, and tried to beat it back as best she could.

"Miss Clara," a voice called from the house an instant before Clara felt cold water hit her.

"Your hair," Katy explained, "Teddy and I were watching and embers landed on your hair."

Clara turned and saw Teddy watching intently as all his belongings and those of his sick sister burned.

When Clara went back inside Katy had left sandwiches and lemonade on the hall table with a pair of scissors. Clara wanted to kiss her. She sat on the porch and inhaled the food, the first she remembered wanting since the day her father was shot. Then she walked back out to the smoldering remains of the fire and cut off her hair, throwing the burnt trimmings into the pyre. For a moment she heard Richard tell her she'd be pretty with a bob, and felt her worry that she'd twist her hair into knots if she couldn't pin it back. Well, what will be will be, she thought.

Later, she wouldn't remember how long she mixed disinfectant solutions and moved systemically through the house, cleaning as the papers told her. She worked until she was beyond thought, beyond words. At one point she woke up on the stairs, where she had fallen asleep disinfecting the banisters. While cleaning the bathroom she dropped bleach on her skirt and stocking and saw both develop holes and kept going.

Checking the papers again she thought there was nothing else to do. Finally, she went to take a shower. Staring at herself in the mirror she saw the bruises and cuts from where she battled with furniture and the very uneven haircut that resulted from cutting off her burned hair. Her hands were red and raw from the cleaning products. She peeled her clothing from her body, carefully wrapping them in the face-covering she was going to enjoy burning, and stepped under the water.

Her kimono was still at Richard's. Clara assumed she'd never see it again, and missed it like an old friend. She put on a robe that scratched her bare skin and lay down on the bed. Sleep overcame her before she even pulled the covers over her. A loud boom shook her awake a few hours later. She flew down the stairs, afraid somehow the fires had reignited.

Another boom felt like it shook the house.

"It's just fireworks, ma'am," Katy said from the side of the porch.

Clara's legs went out from underneath her and she slid to the porch floor. July fourth, she thought. Of course.

"How's Teddy? How are you?" Clara asked.

"Teddy's asleep in the cook's room. I'm done with the laundry, and I made more sandwiches."

Thank you, Clara thought. I'm starving. "But how are you?"

Katy smiled shyly. "I miss Owen, Mr. Sleater I mean, and I wish he'd come back."

"You and Sleater?" Clara asked delightedly, thinking of her father's obsession that she was going to fall for the Irishman. How typical of Father, she thought, he never actually saw what's going on in front of him.

Clara leaned back against the porch railing, watched the fireworks, and listened to Katy talk about exactly how wonderful Owen Sleater really was. For a wild moment, she wanted to join in, to tell Katy about all the reasons she loved Richard, but of course, she couldn't. So she let the other girl's words wash over her.

"I could fix it for you," Katy offered. "Your hair."

And so Clara Thompson's hair was bobbed on the porch of the house her father shared with Margaret Schroeder by one of the women in love with Owen Sleater while fireworks illuminated the ruined belongings of the Schroeder children.

* * *

Jimmy shoveled ham and eggs into his mouth while Richard drank his coffee through a straw. Richard stared down at the table. It was obvious Angela wasn't happy with either her husband or him at the moment. After setting down breakfast she'd gone back into the kitchen and then walked past them without saying a word to answer the ringing telephone. The attempt on Nucky Thompson's life was costing them all, although Richard noted that Jimmy's wife was still in the house with him.

"Oh my god, Clara, are you okay?" Angela asked, speaking into the telephone in the hall.

Jimmy and Richard looked up at each with alarm.

"That's horrible. What can I do?" Angela murmured into the phone for a bit longer, and then came back into the kitchen.

"What's wrong with Clara?" Jimmy asked, as he watched Richard systematically clutch and release the napkin in his hand. Please let Clara be okay, Jimmy thought, thinking of the last time he'd seen her, sobbing in Luciano's car.

"Emily Schroeder has polio,” Angela said with anger and fear in her voice.

“Is. She. Okay?” Richard asked, each word an agony.

“Emily? She can’t walk and Clara said the doctor’s face makes her think there’s little hope she’ll walk again. Now she’s just praying the paralysis doesn't climb up to Emily's lungs. Or Clara? Margaret has barely left the hospital, and do you know what has to be done when a child has polio? Clara's spent the last two days burning toys, mattresses, lines, and clothing. She's had to boil and bleach the entire house, and although I've only been there once, it's quite a house.

"And Clara's had to do it alone because her father and Eddie are out of town, the staff of the Ritz is striking, and the staff at the house quit, except for one young girl Clara's locked in the kitchen with Teddy. And we," Angela gestured around the table, "the people she loves and trusts most in the world are off-limits because two of them betrayed her, and she doesn't want me to come over because she's terrified Tommy will get it. But it's okay, right, because feuds and coups and takeovers are far more important than family."

Jimmy felt their eyes on him. They blamed him. What was he supposed to have done, though?

"She's asked me to go to Blatts and Woolworth's to order toys for Teddy," Angela sighed and turned to Jimmy. "Can you watch Tommy?"

"Of course I can..."

"I mean you. Can you watch Tommy without dumping him off on your mother?" Angela stared directly into her husband's face.

"Sure," Jimmy said. "Richard can drive..."

"I'll walk," Angela answered.

After Angela left, Jimmy turned to Richard. "Can you watch him while I make some calls?"

Tommy stared up at Richard with big, serious eyes. "Did Clara like her present?"

Richard turned to look at the little boy.

"Did she like it?" Tommy asked again.

"I. Mmm," Richard looked down at his hands, which were still clutching his napkin. The ring lay under the quilt Clara brought in the dresser that she used in the room that now tormented him with the memories of what it was like not to be lonely, of having someone he loved love him back.

"Are you and Clara coming to my birthday tonight? Did you get me a present?"

"Clara. Can't. Come," Richard said haltingly.

Tommy looked up at him with sad eyes. "But Clara always comes to my party."

* * *

Clara was in the conservatory attempting to edit her latest manuscript when she heard the sound of her name. Angela, she thought, and raced to look at the window. Angela was indeed standing on the sidewalk.

"You shouldn't be here," Clara said when she went out on the porch. It took all of her self-restraint not to the run down and throw her arms around Angela.

"I'll stay down here. I wanted to check on you." Angela looked at her closely. "You look adorable with your bob."

"All the best people are wearing them," Clara said with a smile. "Thank you for going shopping for me."

Angela regarded Clara seriously. "I owe you a million favors."

"That's not true."

"I wish you had come to me, when..." Angela cleared her throat. "When you found out Jimmy ordered your father's murder."

"Did you know?" Clara asked, disbelief in her voice.

"I heard him, after, on the phone. Did Richard know before? Is that why you broke things off?"

Clara leaned back against the door and closed her eyes. "He knew, but apparently thought he had convinced Jimmy to cancel it. At first...Angela, we were in bed together when the hit was attempted. I thought that was his part in it, to keep me distracted. Now that I know it wasn't, but even so...he still didn't tell me."

Angela winced. She wanted to tell Clara that Richard would never use her like that, but she was no longer sure of what any of them were capable of doing.

"It hurts, doesn't it? For people you love to keep secrets from you?"

Clara blinked. "Angela, I..."

"Oh, I know. You and Jimmy. Your loyalty to him outweighs your loyalty to me," Angela said.

"No, it's just...Jimmy's like my brother, Angela."

"Which is why when I was pregnant and you spent Jimmy's last days with him before he shipped out, when I didn't even know where he was I just accepted it. Can you imagine how that felt when I found out?"

No, Clara thought, at the time I couldn't. At the time I thought I was doing the best I could, for everyone. But if that had been Richard, if I'd been pregnant in a strange city and he could have seen me but didn't, if he spent that time with someone else, even his sister...I can't imagine how that would feel. I would be devastated. My pain would devolve into fury. I would never forgive that trespass, as Angela has forgiven so much Jimmy and I have done.

"Or all the times you and Jimmy have heated conversations that no one ever explains to me, even when they happen in my house?

Clara struggled to keep her voice even. "Angela, I'm sorry. I thought...I thought I was doing the right thing. I wasn't, but I thought I was."

Angela looked away. "I can't imagine how you felt when you thought Richard used you like that. But I do wonder if you are angrier that Jimmy put a hit on your father, or if it's that he didn't tell you about it. That in the end, to both of them, you were just a woman like the rest of us?"

Long after Angela left, Clara continued to sit on the porch. It's why she was sitting there when a Ford pulled up and a man emerged.

"Clara Thompson?

"There's polio in the house, I'd stay back," she called.

The man looked down at the envelope in his hand. "You've been served," he said and dropped the envelope on the sidewalk. She waited until he drove off to retrieve it.

A subpoena to meet with Esther Randolph, Assistant Attorney General. At her office, which was better known at the Atlantic City Post Office. Clara fought back the urge to laugh.

* * *

The blue suit, Clara decided as she dressed. Her father told her she looked like a ragamuffin in it, but she thought it was lucky. She'd gotten a job in it. She'd met Richard in it. If the prosecutor had been a man, she would have put on a dress and brought out Princess Clara. But a woman? A woman would probably see through the act, Clara thought. She doubted Esther Rudolph would fall for the foolish rich girl nonsense the New Jersey State Police bought the night her father was arrested.

Esther Randolph was younger than Clara expected, but, Clara was amused through fear to note, also had a blue suit on, although Miss Randolph's was far more conservative than Clara's.

"I've learned a lot about you," Esther Randolph said, gesturing to the file on her desk. "A man would have gotten a medal for what you did during the war."

"I was a civilian, not a soldier," Clara said.

"Ah, yes. When women do a job somehow it is always painted as somehow less than when a man does it."

Clara didn't disagree, but she also wasn't going to allow herself to see this woman as a friend.

"You came by yourself?"

"I've been able to cross a street since I was six or so." Who could I bring, Clara thought. I couldn't bring my father's attorney, because what if you ask me about Jimmy, or god forbid, Richard? But I couldn't bring Mr. Whitlock, because what if you reveal something about my father Jimmy could use against him?

Esther regarded her. "You know, I wasn't sure what you'd be like. The princess at the Ritz, fancy boarding school, private college...and then you give it up all up to work for the War Department. You come back, get engaged to a New Jersey Blaine, and then end the engagement to write articles and books for young people."

"I didn't think I'd have to explain to you that just because I'm a woman it doesn't mean I don't want to plan my own life."

"Was having your father's enemies try to abduct you, was having bullets fly past your head part of the plan for your life?"

Clara blinked hard, pushing back the memories of that man's hand grabbing her, trying to shove her in the car. That boy's face as he snatched at her leg. Seeing Richard turn the corner.

"Ah, it still bothers you," Esther said when Clara didn't respond. "Does the way your father funds for your pretty life bother you?"

"What do I know about my father's business dealings? To him, I'm just his daughter. He doesn't explain things to me." It's not like I'm a real person that matters, Clara thought.

"And Margaret Schroeder, your father's mistress? Did you know your father killed her husband?"

Clara just stopped herself from saying there was little chance her father actually dirtied his hands. "I know her husband died a few months before she started seeing my father."

"You were with your uncle at your grandfather's funeral last week?"

"Families are usually together at funerals," That was a sudden turn in conversation, Clara thought suspiciously.

"And yet your father wasn't there?"

Clara shrugged. "He's away in England on business."

"What's odd, Miss Thompson, is that your father filed paperwork saying he was taking your grandfather's body to Ireland, Belfast to be exact, for burial, leading me to wonder who you buried in New Jersey?"

It was one of the few times in her life Clara was honestly speechless. What the hell was her father doing in Belfast that would help him destroy Jimmy?

"You love your father?"

Clara thought, I love my father. I love Jimmy. I love Richard. I love Uncle Eli. None of them loved me enough to stop this war, and now I sit being questioned by a federal prosecutor in the fucking post office.

"Of course I love my father."

Esther Randolph rearranged the papers in front of her. "You also love a man named James Darmody? Because there are mentions of Mr. Darmody all over the case notes. Is this going to be your life, Miss Thompson? Every man you love a killer, every comfort in your life paid for by someone else's blood?"

* * *

Each day Clara spent a couple of hours at the Ritz. She needed to pack her room, but she also needed a break away from the house and Teddy, whom she and Katy took turns watching. Teddy exhausted her, even though she felt horribly for him. Margaret felt more like a ghost than a fellow inhabitant of the house. She came and went from the hospital, ate the food Katy put in front of her and focused her energy on making sure her baby survived this scourge.

The strike raged on, and the Ritz was seemingly coming apart at the seams. The hotel began to look shoddy and smudged. Eddie, returned from vacation, was frantic trying to pack the suite without any help. The Boardwalk seemed dirty and tawdry for the first time in Clara's life. Closeted in her room, Clara was forced to relive her life as she sorted her belongings into boxes destined for storage, things to send to her little cousins, and what would first go with her to Margaret's and then to wherever she landed.

From the depths of her closet, an old velvet rabbit fell out. Clara picked it up and stroked an ear, where the nub of the velvet was completely worn away. She couldn't remember a time when she didn't have her rabbit. The memory of Jimmy bringing her the rabbit the night her mother died came back to her. She put the rabbit in the box destined to go with her to Margaret's.

Clara left the Ritz early that day and walked to Leander Whitlock's house, carefully skirting around the striking workers marching on the Boardwalk.

The maid showed her into Mr. Whitlock's office, just like she had done before. Unlike before, someone else sat on the sofa.

"Clara," Jimmy said and started to stand.

Clara waved him off. "Mr. Whitlock, you are both my lawyer and Jimmy's, right?"

Leander regarded Clara thoughtfully, wondering what in the world the child was up to. "That is correct."

"So what we say while we are in the room together?"

"Ah," Leander answered, understanding Clara's implied question. "Yes, most things said between the three of us fall under attorney-client privilege, unless you two mean to plan a crime." Leander reflected that he positively should have charged Clara a higher retainer. After all, he wouldn't be surprised if Clara and Jimmy started planning a half-baked criminal enterprise in his office.

"Did my father have you kill Margaret's husband?" Clara asked Jimmy directly.

Jimmy blinked rapidly. "No," he answered, not expecting that question.

"Don't lie to me, James," Clara responded.

"Clara, I swear. On Tommy, I swear."

Clara closed her eyes and thought back to early 1920. "Because that's when you accidentally started a war with Rothstein by killing his men in the woods?" That led to the d'Alessio brothers getting involved, Clara thought. That led to those men trying to kidnap me, trying to kill me on a city street. That led to Richard killing a teenager. All because you wanted to appear like a big man to Al Capone, darling brother.

Leander stood up, poured three whiskeys, added a little water to one, and then handed out the drinks.

Before taking a sip, Clara swirled the glass in her hand, looking at the amber liquor thoughtfully. "Do you think the Volstead Act has stopped one person from drinking? Do you think any drunkard is now a sober family man because of Prohibition?"

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," Leander said.

"Clara, why? Why are you asking?" Jimmy questioned her, ignoring her reverie about Prohibition.

Is this where I cross the Rubicon? Clara wondered, or have I been crossing it all along in inches, always pretending like I wasn't making unalterable decisions? "Remember when we were children and we'd play that game with rubber bands, but you had to be careful that the rubber band didn't snap back and hit you instead of the target?"

Jimmy nodded, confused.

"You tried to get my father convicted on state charges, he used political influence to turn them into Federal charges, and now the Harding administration is in chaos and they've cut him loose. That lady prosecutor? She means to get him, and not on racketeering charges. She asked me about Margaret's husband, said my father had him killed, and then she said your name was all over the file. The rubber band snapped, Jimmy, on both of you."

"Damn it," Jimmy said, rubbing his eyes. Nucky had taken care of things regarding those men in the woods, Jimmy thought, but God knew what else could come to light.

"Mr. Whitlock, could Clara and I have a moment?" Jimmy asked, needing to talk to Clara without having to be careful.

Leander looked at them both and then walked away.

"Why are you telling me?" Jimmy asked, not quite meeting Clara's eyes.

"Do you think I want you in the electric chair? Do you think I want Angela to be a widow, or for Tommy to grow up without a father? Goodness, Jimmy, just because I'm furious with you..." Clara turned away, unwilling to let him see the emotion in her eyes.

Jimmy fumbled in his pocket, lit a cigarette, took a drag, and tapped Clara on her shoulder. She reached back for the cigarette without saying a word. They shared it silently for a while.

"I don't want Nucky to get the chair either," Jimmy finally said quietly. "I didn't want the hit, I don't want him to die."

"Then why?"

"Fuck, Clara, I don't know. I thought it would be a clean coup, he'd pay for..."

"For Gillian," Clara finished his sentence.

"Richard really thought he had convinced me not to go through it." Jimmy said, trying to fix the one thing he thought might still be in his power to set right.

Clara nodded. "Uncle Eli told me. It's why I went to the Dempsey fight. Well, that and when I went to the Ritz to change I realized a strike was starting and I was going to warn you."

"I'm sorry about that night, too. I put that girl in his lap, Clara. I was just trying to make him feel better." And it was yet something else I've fucked up, Jimmy thought.

"Richard's a grown-up, Jimmy. He knew a hit against my father was something you considered, seriously, and still didn't tell me. He didn't have to kiss that girl. He hasn't even tried to reach out to me."

"He loves you, Clara. He's heartbroken."

Clara looked up, and Jimmy flinched away from the pain in her eyes. "And I'm not?"

Jimmy lit another cigarette, and they shared it as well. Clara realized she'd missed the cigarettes.

"Tommy missed you at his birthday."

"Tommy's birthday," Clara said quietly. "I was there when that child was born, but I completely forgot his birthday."

Jimmy looked at her. "You sent a present. Toy horses. He loves them."

"No, Angela must have bought them when she ordered toys for Teddy..."

Jimmy shook his head. "No, Angela wandered how you got the present to us."

Clara closed her eyes at the same time as Jimmy realized. Richard brought the present so that Tommy wouldn't think that Clara forgot him. It was sheer strength of will that kept Clara from crying in Leander Whitlock's office.

* * *

Margaret was sitting in the drawing-room, watching Teddy play on the porch when Clara returned to Margaret's house.

"How's Emily?" Clara asked quietly.

"No change," Margaret said. "The doctors think that's a good thing."

It means the polio isn't climbing toward her lungs, Clara thought. Thank God.

Clara sat in the chair across from Margaret and tried to think about what she wanted to say. What she could say, to someone who had only ever been kind to her, to someone whose daughter lay in the hospital fighting for her little life.

"I wasn't especially kind when you and my father...started," Clara said in a rush. "It was nothing to do with you, or the children. It's just, my father, he's hardly been a monk since my mother died. There were always women, and it just seemed best not to get attached. But Margaret, you are the best of them and my father is lucky to have you. I've been lucky to have you this last year.I think you might be to good for the likes of the Thompsons, honestly."

Margaret turned to stare, Clara's outburst catching her by surprise. "You've never been anything other than pleasant and polite. I only knew..." in her exhaustion, Margaret had to search for the right word, "...that you weren't showing your honest self because I saw you with Mr. Harrow when he protected us all. But Clara...I'll never forget how you helped my children and I during this."

Margaret and her children, more hostages to fortune, more people she didn't want to see harmed, Clara thought. More people the men in their lives were failing to protect.

That night in her room, she set aside the last edits of her Bobbsey Twins book. Tomorrow she would mail it out. The Stratemeyers had told her it would be the first week of August before she received another assignment. She had a few articles to write, but she knew she needed a break. Maybe she'd start planning a novel that was just hers.

First, though, she took out her notepaper with her monogram CST (Clara Susan Thompson) embossed on the top and began writing.

_My dearest, Richard,_

_I wonder if this how the citizens of Pompeii felt when the volcano erupted? Everything covered in ash, everything ruined, and no seeming reason for any of it? Do you think they knew what had happened to them?_

_I don't know what's happened to any of us. I'm so sorry for my temper and impetuousness. I'm so angry-at Jimmy, at you. But underneath all of that, I love you, and if ash is falling, I still want to be with you._

She wrote until all her feelings were out, all her anger, fear, and all of it. Then she signed it, stuffed the pages in an envelope, and walked up to Katy's room to beg a favor.

* * *

"Daddy!"

Clara heard the child's excited cry from upstairs.

"Well, if it isn't the heroine of the hour," Nucky said with a smile at his daughter as he finished greeting Teddy.

Clara smiled and then noticed Katy staring starry-eyed at Owen Sleater. It made her think of Memorial Day when she had missed Richard so badly and wondered how she would keep from throwing herself at him when he showed up at the Memorial (which he didn't, she thought, and then realized he'd never actually told her why). "Mr. Sleater, Katy and I have been struggling to get something down off a high shelf in the kitchen for days. Would you mind going to help her?"

Katy flashed a smile at her as they walked towards the stairs, and Clara smiled back.

"Playing cupid?" Nucky asked after he sent Teddy outside to play, and he motioned for Clara to sit in the drawing-room.

"Katy deserves every kindness we can give her, and she definitely deserves a huge bonus. She was the only person who didn't quit."

"And what do you deserve?" Nucky asked.

She smoothed her green skirt. "The truth. To be treated like a grown-up, for once in our relationship. You weren't in England, you were in Ireland. Where you apparently were burying my grandfather, which is odd since I watched his coffin lowered into the ground in Dorothy. And yet there was a coffin on your ship's manifest, so God only knows what you and Sleater were up to in Ireland.

"Or we could talk about the strike that's crippling Atlantic City, that's going to destroy a lot of our fellow citizens who have voted for you, who have paid protection money, who love their flashy former treasurer.

"Or I guess we could discuss why you ordered Margaret's husband murdered, and who did it?"

Nucky walked to the bar and poured a drink. "How the fuck do you know any of that?

"In the middle of trying to cope with Emily's illness, I was subpoenaed by Esther Randolph."

"I told you to contact my lawyer, Clara!" He turned to glare at his daughter.

Clara met her father's gaze with a glare of her own. "And yet I didn't, because I don't trust him."

"Yet I'm to trust you?"

"You could end up in the electric chair! Was any of this worth it?" Clara said through gritted teeth. "And do you think I would say anything to Miss Randolph that would hurt you?"

"I'm going to handle it, Clara. You don't have to worry about it."

Her father made his excuses, and after he left the room, Clara stared out the window and realized he hadn't answered any of her questions.

* * *

Jimmy's car wasn't in front of the beach house, so Clara chanced that he wasn't home.

"Clara," Angela said when she opened the door.

The words began to tumble out. "That day I went to meet you for the first time I was so scared. But then, Angela, I loved you. Almost instantly, I loved you. I was so happy it was you Jimmy had fallen in love with. And you've been such a good friend to me since the first day we met. But especially when I first came back, before I left for D.C. And then when I came back from D.C., when somehow I ended up engaged to Darcy...you helped me. You are one of the few people I can just be myself with, and I'm so, so sorry for all the ways I've betrayed you and wasn't a very good friend to you."

"Would you like to come inside?" Angela asked gently, which caused Clara to laugh.

They walked into the sunroom. "Clara, I've kept my fair share of secrets from you. Our friendship...it was always going to be fraught. Jimmy loves his secrets, and you've been keeping them since you shared a crib."

Clara blinked.

"I do have a question, though. Are Tommy and I in danger?" Angela asked while looking out toward the beach.

"I don't know, Angela. Do you think that you are?" Clara brushed her hair behind her ear, fighting the urge to twist her hair.

"Ever since...Nucky, Jimmy's just seemed on edge."

"My father, he would never hurt you or Tommy. But some of the people Jimmy is in business with, Angela, I've met some of them and I wouldn't put anything past them."

Angela took a deep breath.

"Let's go away," Clara said suddenly. "The men are committed to this foolishness, so let them sort it out for themselves. You, me, Tommy, we'll go away. My friend Rose Grenville? I was at her grandmother, Mrs. Levitz's, cottage in Newport in May and she told me to come stay anytime. She even offered her guest house. She's delightfully bohemian, so she'd love the idea of us setting up a tiny little artist's colony. She stays in Newport until the first week of October, so we'd have a little over two months. Hopefully, by then, things will be sorted or we will just head back to New York. "

Angela nodded. "Clara, I keep secrets, too. I've met someone."

Ah, the things we never talk about, Clara thought. "A woman?" she asked gently.

"How did you know?" Angela said, terror in her voice.

"When you first moved to Atlantic City and I came to visit you from Washington? I thought there was something with your friend Mary?" Clara didn't tell Angela that Jimmy had later told her Angela tried to run away with Mary.

Angela nodded, and then decided to confide in Clara. "Her name is Louise. She's a novelist."

Clara didn't judge Angela, but she also silently apologized to Jimmy for her harsh judgment towards him. Maybe he knew, she thought. Perhaps that's why.

"Invite her. Two writers, a painter, one Tommy? That sounds like an excellent beginning of an artist's colony. We could leave in two days? Tomorrow Emily comes home from the hospital and I'd like to be there, and that will give Mrs. Levitz time to answer us."

Angela nodded. This was different from last time. They were going with Clara, she was going to tell Jimmy, it was for Tommy's best interest. "Yes. Jimmy just left to go to Princeton, but he should be back by then. It will be good for Tommy to be away from Gillian."

Clara looked over at Angela. "I'm sure," she finally said.

"And Richard?" Angela asked gently.

Clara sighed. "I wrote him a letter. I poured out all of my feelings. He needs to make the next move."

Angela reached for Clara's hand. "I never had a sister, and I haven't had a lot of women friends. But Clara, a friend who holds your hand while you have your baby, who loves your child like her own, who pins your hair at your wedding, who supports your ambitions, and listens when you need to talk? Those friends don't happen very often. And I truly believe soon I'll be pinning flowers in your hair when you marry Richard, and holding your hand while you have your babies, and watching your children play on the beach with Tommy. Just like I've celebrated every book and article you've written, we're going to celebrate all those things together, too."

Clara blinked away more tears. "In two days, we are going to off on a new adventure."

"I'll see you in two days," Angela responded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me start by saying I, 100%, do not believe Clara needs to be great at domestic tasks to be real woman. However, Clara has been protected by Nucky's money, the staff at the Ritz, Richard, Jimmy, and others. So this chapter is very much about what happens when she doesn't have those things, and how she copes. I'd love to hear what you think about this chapter, this fic, and where the story is going as we race to the end of season two.


	24. Come With Me-July 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tragedy in Atlantic City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Canonical Major Character Death

Richard unfolded the letter once more and began reading again. He could hear Clara in every word he read, like she was standing behind him, whispering in his ear. Clara's pain and anger were there in her writing, but so were her confusion and even her love for him. She still loved him.

Since he found the letter tucked in his door frame, he had read it a hundred times, and still didn't know what to do. The idea of Clara hurting made him feel like he couldn't breathe. However, nothing was different. In fact, things were worse. How could he approach her when things were so fragile?

Two days prior was the only time Richard had allowed himself to be truly angry with Jimmy. Waxey Gordon had failed to kill the butcher. Jimmy had dispatched Mickey Doyle to finally, finally settle the debt he owed Manny Horvitz, butcher. Richard had tried to explain to Jimmy that with men like the butcher, it was as much a debt of honor as it was a debt of money and that Jimmy needed to go in person to make amends with the man. Jimmy had blown Richard off, dismissing his concern.

Jimmy's behavior at the warehouse pushed Richard to the edge when Jimmy threw a tantrum as he realized that it was Nucky who was drowning Atlantic City in inexpensive, top-shelf Irish whiskey. Richard's hand worked furiously as he thought about the Irishman. He should have killed the man that day at the casino, he thought. It would have weakened Nucky, it would have prevented this Irish whiskey gambit, and it would have meant the man wouldn't have come to take Clara away that awful afternoon.

Jimmy's tantrum (Richard couldn't think of another word, although it made him feel like his mother to use it) over not being able to sell the liquor they had bought from George Remus had caused Richard to walk away. Jimmy had utterly lost it in front of Capone, Lansky, and Luciano.

The alcohol and the men that it was worth trying to kill Nucky over. The alcohol and men it was worth hurting Clara over.

In front of Luciano. Richard closed his eyes, trying to forget the image of Luciano's body pressed against Clara, Clara's lipstick smudged across the corner of Luciano's mouth, Clara asking Luciano to get her away from Jimmy and from him.

More than the kiss, it was the fact that Clara trusted Luciano when she needed help that felt like a knife in his side.

The ringing telephone made Richard jump. He reached for hesitantly, still getting used to its intrusion into his life. Jimmy had wanted him to get one for months, but it was when Clara started staying with him that he acquiesced. He wanted to have a way to reach her, and it seemed safer for Clara to have a way to call for help if needed.

"Hello," he rasped out.

"You need to come to Jimmy's house immediately," a woman's voice said in his ear.

"Mrs. Darmody? Mmm. Why," Richard tried to respond.

"Now," she said, and he heard the click of the phone in his ear.

Richard's mouth was dryer than usual as he sped to Jimmy and Angela's, and his hands trembled so badly he had to purposefully try to steady them so the car would steer straight.

Mrs. Darmody stood outside smoking as he pulled up to the house. "It took you long enough. Angela and her friend are dead upstairs. Where is Jimmy?"

Richard stepped back. He felt like the air had just been punched out of his body.

"Mmm. Angel-"

"Is dead," Gillian snapped. "I know you aren't a whole man, but you need to pay attention. Where. Is. Jimmy?"

Richard would never be able to clearly remember the events of the morning. Somehow he managed to tell Mrs. Darmody where Jimmy was staying in Princeton, and then she sent him upstairs to see if he knew the woman Angela was with.

It wasn't as if he had never seen a dead body before. His grandmother was the first body Richard ever saw, back when he was still just a boy. What he remembered most was how small she looked lying in bed with the blanket pulled up to her chin. Nothing at all like the sturdy farm woman who baked him apple cakes and still built her own fires. He had seen sixty-one since he was personally responsible for, and countless others besides. The trenches with bodies piled like broken toys abandoned by careless children, the field hospitals where men, boys, died next to him and sometimes lay there for hours before anyone had time to remove them.

That one hospital, with the nice nurse from Yorkshire whose voice stayed with him although he had never seen her face clearly because of the gauze around his head, the one from the hospital he dreamed about later, who he heard quietly raging about the senseless of a nineteen-year-old dying from a head injury as she ordered someone to take the body away but it was hours before anyone did. It was after the boy's body was moved he heard the American girl trying to talk to the nurse, but her voice was damaged, and...

Richard pushed the thought away. No, he thought, I won't take refuge in a dream. He took a deep breath and tried to think like a soldier as he opened the door to Jimmy and Angela's room, the one place in the beach house where he had never been.

Angela looked young and so fragile. He had never noticed how small her bones were. She was wearing one of those silk and lace one-piece things Clara wore to bed. Did Angela and Clara shop together, he wondered wildly, buying pretty silky things and eating lunch and bribing Tommy with ice cream so they could dawdle over coffee and talk about art and books and Jimmy?

The young woman under Angela was naked, and Richard didn't recognize her. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. She had been shot first, Richard decided, and then Angela. The other girl must have been standing, but Angela was kneeling.

Angela knew she was going to die, Richard thought, and the idea of Angela terrified in her last moments made him want to be sick. Angela was so kind, Angela was a good mother, a good friend, a good person who never hurt anyone. But she died afraid.

He reached out and touched her hand, something in life he had only done to help her in and out of the car. The flesh under his hand was cold and felt dense, not like the soft, dry hand he had felt yesterday. Like in life, Angela's fingernails had flecks of paint under them, from a painting she'd never finish.

Whoever shot her was a professional. There were closer range shots through both women's foreheads. A small-caliber handgun, Richard decided. A tall man.

The butcher.

The shower dripped from the bathroom. Jimmy had complained about it, Richard remembered. The faucet had to be turned a certain way or it leaked. So the woman must have been in the shower, and Angela asleep in her bed.

Asleep in her bed, when a monster came and destroyed her.

He heard sirens and went back downstairs, trying to make sense of everything that had happened. Gillian Darmody talked, and talked, and talked to someone from the sheriff's office who wasn't Eli Thompson while Richard thought. He stood in the window and watched Angela's body be taken out on a covered stretcher. It was only a little over six months ago he had stood on a truck and unloaded Jimmy and Angela's belongings into their new home. Clara and Angela had stood on stools and hung the white drapes in the sunroom that were now blowing in the midmorning breeze. He had been so jealous of Jimmy that day. Jimmy, who had a son, a beautiful wife, a house, and a sister for whom he could still feel love.

And now Jimmy's wife was dead, his home was an abattoir, and his sister was turned against him.

After the deputies left, something made him need to go upstairs again. It was as if with every moment there was less of Angela in the house, even though he could see her purse sitting on a kitchen chair and the flowers she bought the day before carefully arranged in a vase on the table. He couldn't bear for Angela's sweet spirit to dissipate from her home so quickly, unmourned, unnoticed. He mumbled excuse me to Mrs. Darmody and went back upstairs, where he had to steel himself to walk back into the bedroom.

All that was left was a dark stain on the floor, and blood splatters on the wallpaper. Richard knelt and reverently reached out to the stain, feeling the viscous fluid between his fingers. Blood. Blood, like he'd had on his hands so many times. Blood, blood that had turned Angela Darmody's pretty bedroom into a scene of horror.

He knew what he had to do. Angela was neat. She couldn't bear disarray. It was one of the things he liked about her because he felt the same. Disorder made him want to twist things between his fingers.

Mrs. Darmody was on the phone, trying to call Jimmy again, he thought. He carefully retrieved Angela's cleaning supplies from the service porch. It meant he was removing the last of her physical presence from her home, but he knew Angela would want her house set back to rights as soon as possible. So he took off his jacket and tie, rolled up his sleeves, and set to work.

He wasn't sure how long he washed the walls or scrubbed the floors until the evidence of the last moments of Angela's life was carefully removed so that her son or husband would never accidentally see them. Richard walked into the bathroom to clean himself up. A bar of Clara's special orange soap sat in the soap dish. He remembered using her bar to make sure there was no blood left on his hand before he touched her the night he and Jimmy scalped Parkhurst.

Clara, he thought.

_Clara._

* * *

The knit of the blue sailor-style dress Clara wore was so delicate as to feel like she was wearing tissue instead of cloth, but the heat was already so oppressive the dress clung like wool to the silk step-in she wore beneath it. She sat next to Eddie in the front seat so that her father could sit with Margaret and the children in the back. Emily was in Margaret's lap, but her steel braced little legs stretched across into Nucky's lap.

Clara decided she wouldn't complain about the heat while poor Emily was encased in metal.

"If you are going to drive the Rolls, perhaps I should give you new lessons," Eddie said quietly.

"Let's all hope I never have to drive it again," Clara said lightly. "Did I damage it terribly?"

"It's only a vehicle," Eddie allowed. "It can be repaired."

Unlike so much else, Clara thought.

Arriving home, Clara sat her purse and hat on the table by the stairs and let her father and Margaret settle Emily into the drawing-room without her interference.

"Miss, a telegram arrived for you," Katy told her as she put her things down.

Clara ripped it open hopefully.

COME AT ONCE. ALWAYS WANTED MY OWN ARTIST COLONY. EXPECT TWO BEST SELLERS & ONE ARTISTIC MASTERPIECE AS PAYMENT. MARTHA LEVITZ.

Meeting Rose Grenville, she thought, was one of the most fortunate occurrences of her life. Rose had saved her, Rose's mother had helped put her back together when Clara believed she had been irrecoverably broken back in 1918, and now Rose's grandmother was going to help her make sure Angela and Tommy weren't damaged by this war.

As she sat down to eat lunch with her father and his new family, she smiled at him. "You know, you weren't entirely wrong to send me to Foxcroft."

"I wish you had realized that back in 1914," Nucky said sardonically, wondering why his daughter brought up that subject seven years later.

Clara had always considered Margaret's homes chaotic, but that afternoon was exceptionally hectic. Her father had set up his office in the morning room. Bill Fallon, her father's new attorney, came to consult about her father's criminal case while Owen Sleater helped Margaret carry Emily upstairs for a nap.

"Can we play checkers?" Teddy asked her.

"Sure," Clara responded. Teddy was hardly her favorite child, but she had understood the boy better over the last weeks. Clara almost felt bad about leaving him when Margaret was clearly not going to have enough time for him, and her father was so distracted. She'd play checkers with Teddy, she decided, and then she'd go see Angela, go to the train station to buy four tickets to Newport, and send a response telegram to Mrs. Levitz with their arrival information.

There was a knock at the door. Clara heard Katy answer it.

"You can not be here," Owen said from upstairs.

Clara looked into the foyer, and saw Richard stood with his hat in his hands by the front door.

"Richard," she said questioningly, not quite believing he was standing in Margaret's house. She looked him over closely and saw one lock of his hair was loose and his eye was red. Her heart began to race.

"Clara," he said, and his voice made a chill go down her spine.

Clara realized Sleater was galloping down the stairs, and moved to the bottom of the staircase, effectively trapping the Irishman. "What are you doing here?"

"Miss Thompson, get back," Sleater ordered.

Clara looked over her shoulder."Don't be ridiculous, he's not here to hurt us."

When Clara looked back at Richard he was looking down to the right while his hands were rapidly cupping and uncupping around his cap.

"I'm. Mmm. Leaving," Richard said finally looking Clara in the eye.

"I don't understand," Clara began, her hands tightly clutching her skirt, out of fear she would reach for him if she didn't.

"I want," he started hesitantly.

Bill Fallon was in the morning room, explaining to Nucky exactly how serious the charges were when they heard something happening in the foyer. Nucky opened the door and was taken back when he realized it was Jimmy's freak standing in his foyer while Clara stared at the man from the bottom of the staircase.

"What the hell are you doing here," Nucky asked in disbelief.

"I want you. I need you," Richard continued, his voice breaking with every syllable as he tried to ignore everyone but Clara, who was staring at him with large, watery eyes.

"To come. With me."

Clara heard the click after every word and knew in a flash what this was costing him.

"What is going on down there," Margaret called from upstairs. "Emily is trying to sleep!" Margaret stopped when she saw Mr. Harrow looking at Clara like he was baring his soul to her in the foyer while Owen tried to get around Clara, Nucky stared at them from the doorway to the morning room, and Teddy stood unnoticed in the drawing-room.

"Richard, I..."

"Mmm. I love. You, Clara. I need you. To come. With me."

Clara could see the fear in his eye, but she was rooted where she stood until he reached his left hand out towards her. She took a shaky breath, bit her lip, and nodded as she crossed the foyer and put her hand in his.

Richard looked down at Clara's hand for a moment and then turned quickly, determined to get them away from the house.

"Let go of my daughter," Nucky ordered from the door.

"Father, I'm leaving," Clara said quietly.

"Harrow, let go of Miss Thompson," Owen ordered, now down the staircase, and standing directly behind Clara.

Margaret watched the scene unfolding and knew without a doubt that at least Mr. Harrow and Owen were armed. She did not want a shootout in her foyer, with Teddy watching from the next room. Clara's words from the dinner back in early spring came to her, ' _the moment he asks_ ,' Clara had said, ' _I'm his_.'

He had asked.

"Enoch, let her go," Margaret said.

Nucky looked up at Margaret in disbelief.

Someone pressed something into Clara's left hand. Clara looked up, and Katy was pressing her hat and purse into her hand. Katy smiled at her and then stepped away.

"I forbid you from leaving with this...man, Clara," Nucky said, taking another step toward his daughter.

Clara took a deep breath, butterflies raging in her stomach. She knew she was finally making a decision. "I love you, Father, but I'm leaving with Richard. Please, please just let us leave."

Bill Fallon had watched the entire drama play out from the morning room. He wasn't sure what, exactly, was happening, but anyone with eyes could see that Thompson's daughter was in love with the strange man she was clinging to, and the whole situation was about to boil over. Fallon's number one rule in life was not to be around when people started shooting at his clients.

"Nucky, she's an adult and you don't need any more distractions or problems. Let her leave," the attorney said without moving.

Nucky nodded slowly, anger apparent in every line in his face, and stepped away from the door.

Richard pulled her in front of him as they went out the door. "Mmm. Clara,"

"Get me back to your place, then we'll talk,"Clara squeezed his hand as she spoke.

Nucky watched his daughter hold on to the masked man, James's fucking point man, until Harrow helped her into a Ford, and they drove away.

Clara drove away. With his enemy's soldier. Clara, who never expressed one fucking feeling towards Darcy Blaine, but had tears running down her face when Harrow said he loved her.

When he said he loved her. Who the hell did Richard Harrow think he was to love Nucky Thompson's daughter?

Nucky turned to look at everyone standing around the foyer. "Would someone like to explain to me why the hell my daughter just left with Richard fucking Harrow?"

"Clara loves the Tin Man," Teddy said from the drawing-room. Every head swiveled to look at him.

"What?" Nucky snapped.

Teddy swallowed, suddenly sorry he had said anything, but still wanting to answer the man he called Daddy.

"Clara's always loved the Tin Man."

* * *

"Just go," Clara whispered when they got into the Ford, her fingertips smoothing and smoothing the pleats in her dress.

Richard glanced back at the house, half expecting Sleater or Thompson himself to come out shooting. They were silent on the ride to his room, but Clara's shoulder pressed against his arm, even though she looked straight ahead the entire time.

The silence continued when they reached his place. Clara felt shy as they walked in, like they hadn't done it dozens of times before. As she looked around she realized all traces of her were gone. The pillow, the quilt, even the toaster were missing.

"All. Of your things. Are in. Your dresser. I..." his voice trailed off. He didn't know how to tell her that he missed her and that seeing her things made her absence hurt even more.

Clara closed her eyes, and felt Richard behind her moments before she heard the sound of tin striking wood. His hand was still there, carefully lining up the mask with the edge of the desk. She ran her hand down the green tweed of his jacket, past the blue poplin of his shirt cuff, and on to the skin of his hand. A sigh escaped without her notice.

These were the last moments of their before. Everything that was about to happen, Clara thought as she drummed her fingers softly against his hand, it was going to propel them into the after. She didn't know what the after would be, and her stomach twisted in peremptory agony.

But right now, right now Richard had come to get her. They were no longer a secret. They were no longer apart, she was back in his room, where she had been so happy. Slowly Clara began to turn until she faced him.

He wasn't making eye contact with her. Clara reached up, running her right hand across the left side of his face.

Her hand was warm, and on instinct, he leaned into it and brought his own hand up to cover hers. He reveled in the warm softness of her hand, how alive it was, as he tried to banish the cold, dense feeling of Angela Darmody's hand from his mind.

"Clara," he tried to begin.

She shook her head. "Not yet, okay? I know...there are all sorts of things we have to talk about. And I know there's something else waiting. But not yet."

They stood without speaking. Richard finally looked at her. "I knew. You would. Look pretty. With a bob."

"So far I haven't pulled the hair out of my scalp," Clara answered, mustering a weak smile. But that might change soon, she thought.

Richard looked back down. A storm of feelings brewed inside him, more feelings than he could name or identify as the adrenaline rush that had seen him through leaving the Darmody house and going for Clara faded away. Now Clara was back with him, but standing in front of him looking lost and unsure. He wanted to tell her what having her hand on his face meant to him, that he couldn't believe she was back standing with him in his room, that missing her had hurt so badly it felt like physical pain, but he couldn't think of how to say it. Then he realized Clara had already given him the words.

"I thought. Mmm. About kissing you. A lot. Did you. Think about kissing me?"

Clara blinked as she recognized her own phrasing, and whispered, "Every day."

He put his hand on the back of her head and pulled her to him, hearing the half-breath Clara always drew before they kissed as he did. Part of him was afraid that after being away, after kissing Luciano, Clara would finally be disgusted by the ruined side of his mouth. Instead he felt her mouth open under his, and her right hand reached up to brush along the thick scar on the left side of his face, until her hand entwined in his hair and she used both hands to bring his face down more firmly upon hers. He felt himself melt into her, into the feeling of sweet escape from the prison of his mind that the physicality of Clara always offered, and finally he put his other hand against her back and gently pushed her torso against his.

What she wanted most was to drown into the kiss, to sink to the floor and pull Richard down with her, to forget about Atlantic City and families and booze and everything that wasn't the two of them, alone, in that room. If she had her wish, she'd stretch out on the floor and pretend to close her eyes while Richard unclipped her stockings, but really she'd be watching from under her eyelashes because she adored the serious look on his face at such moments, the way his eyebrows knit together as he undressed her or touched her.

Instead, when they broke the kiss so each could breathe, like swimmers emerging for air, Clara placed her forehead against his. This the end of this part of us, Clara thought. After this moment, I'm going to be different. We are going to be different.

"It's Jimmy, isn't it?" Clara said, her voice already heavy with emotion. "Something's happened to Jimmy."

Richard tightened his grasp on her arms and gently pushed her back, until she was sitting in the desk chair and he was kneeling in front of her. Clara's eyes were already bright with pain, and he wondered how many times this year he'd already seen such blinding pain on her face.

"No," he finally forced out, and he saw questioning look on Clara's face. "It's. Mmm. It's Angela."

* * *

"Tell me what I can do," Nucky snarled at his lawyer while he upended yet another box of his daughter's possessions onto the bed. Everything from purses to notebooks to an old stuffed velvet bunny fell out.

"To get your daughter back?" Fallon asked, turning to look at Mrs. Schroeder and Owen Sleater, who both stood in the corner watching Thompson destroy the room.

"Yes, to stop my daughter from ruining her fucking life!" Nucky barked back as he went through the purses, finding a small album of pictures.

"Well, not even a judge you bribed, if you could even afford to bribe one, is going to believe she's mentally deficient. How old is she?"

"Clara will be twenty-three in two weeks," Margaret said.

"So she's an adult, and you can only make medical decisions for her in certain situations. I think you need to let Clara make her own choices, and focus on your trial."

"What about Mann violations? If they leave the state, we could have them arrested, correct?" Nucky asked.

"You want to have Clara arrested on sex trafficking charges?" Margaret asked in disbelief.

"Nucky, the last thing you want is for your daughter or a man who used to work for you to fall into Esther Randolph's waiting claws with charges hanging over them. Especially if they are angry with you." Nucky was furiously flipping the pages of his daughter's photograph album and didn't respond. "I'm going back to the hotel and we'll resume work tomorrow."

Margaret tried to smile at the attorney as he left.

"Look at these pictures," Nucky said angrily.

Margaret pushed down a sigh and looked. Clara handing Mr. Harrow a lit candle as they stood in front of a Christmas tree. The two of them dancing. With the good side of the Tin Man's profile facing the camera, they were quite an attractive couple, Margaret thought. A picture of Mr. Harrow alone, but he was looking full faced down at the person taking the picture, his hair was mussed, and the good side of his face relaxed. Clara must have taken it.

"Don't you see?" Nucky asked her.

"No," Margaret said, as she fought the urge to say, don't I see that your daughter has been madly in love with Mr. Harrow for months, that practically everyone else in Atlantic City knew? Yes. Only you missed it.

"This has been going on since what, Christmas? No," Nucky said and turned back to face Owen and Margaret. "Teddy said Clara had always loved the Tin Man. Was Harrow taking liberties last summer?"

Out of those two, chances are it was your precious Clara taking liberties, Margaret thought.

"I don't think so, no. It was just obvious that Clara and Mr. Harrow were friends. She was different with him than she was with us, more open, like they'd known each other for years."

"They'd barely met!" Nucky said through gritted teeth, and looked at the pictures again.

"She screamed for him," he whispered.

"I'm sorry, sir?" Owen asked.

"When the fucking d'Alessios attacked her," Nucky said. "James and Harrow were with me. She saw us in the lobby, she was leaving out the side street entrance with O'Bryan, going to the damn library. We went out the main door, I was getting in the car, and then Harrow started running. Even before she screamed, he was running.

"When she screamed, she didn't just cry out. She didn't scream for me. She didn't scream for James. I would have expected Clara to scream for James," he said, looking up at Margaret and Owen like they would understand what he was saying. "It would have made sense if she screamed for James. But she screamed for him."

"Harrow?" Owen confirmed.

"And then she let him pick her up and stay with her, like her trust in him was just..." Nucky's voice drifted into nothingness, and then he started throwing Clara's belongings from the bed onto the floor, looking for something, until he found a copy of Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_ and snatched it up, showing the cover to Margaret and Owen _. "_ It all makes sense, don't you see?"

Neither Margaret nor Owen spoke.

"Clara's always loved stories about King Arthur, about courtly love. It's Mabel! It all goes back to Mabel. It's left Clara afraid of normal relationships, so she's concocted this fantasy where she's the princess and Harrow is the courtly knight whose love is pure so she doesn't have to worry about the unseemly side of a relationship. It's why she broke things off with Darcy Blaine. I don't know why I didn't see it before."

"Clara's concocted this fantasy?" Margaret asked.

Eddie walked in at that moment, so obviously upset he didn't even notice the destruction of the boxes from the Ritz that an hour before were neatly stacked against the wall.

"Nucky, Angela Darmody has been murdered," Eddie said breathlessly.

"Dear God!" Margaret exclaimed, feeling sick.This life, she thought. They were all paying. Emily paralyzed, Angela Darmody dead.

"That explains it, don't you see?" Nucky asked. "It's really because of James, not Harrow."

Neither Margaret nor Owen looked at him.

"That's not all. Your brother has been arrested."

"Damn it! Get the car, Eddie, I'm going to the hotel to talk to Fallon," Nucky snapped, stepping around the disaster of Clara's room.

After he left, Margaret and Owen stared at each other.

"I suppose no father wants to think of his little girl enjoying being bedded," Owen said with a smirk."But Mr. Thompson is reaching new levels of denial."

Margaret looked around the disaster of a room. She thought of Nucky, last year, when he found the Listerine douche she was using, when he threw it against the dresser mirror, breaking it.

"Do you know what a Dutch Cap is?" she asked quietly.

Owen looked up at her, surprised. "I've heard of such. Why?"

"Clara has one. We have to find it before Nucky decides to search her room again. It's better if we don't disturb his fantasy."

Their eyes met, and Margaret knew what they were both thinking. If Nucky was this unhinged over the idea of Clara and Harrow, what be his response if he found out about them?

* * *

"No," Clara said with despair in her voice. "Angela's fine. I saw her yesterday. We're going to Rhode Island tomorrow, to stay with Rose Grenville's grandmother. We are taking her friend Louise and Tommy. Angela's going to paint, Louise and I are going to write, we'll all help take care of Tommy. I was going to tell you, because I need to go get them settled, but then I'll go back and forth..."

Richard swallowed, wishing that just for once he could go back to speaking normally. "Clara. Someone broke. Into the beach. House. Angela and her. Friend. Were shot."

"No. Because that's not right. Angela was happy, she really liked Louise, I could tell. She had just started a new painting. And Tommy, in another year he'll be starting school and Angela will have so much more time and she can really paint seriously...." Clara rattled off, desperation in her voice.

Richard squeezed her hands.

"Tommy?" Clara asked.

"He's fine. He was at. His grandparents. He's with. Gillian."

Clara's stomach twisted and she thought was going to be sick. Tommy was with Gillian at the Commodore's terrifying mausoleum, because Angela was dead. Angela, dead. The words were in her mind but they made no sense. How could Angela be dead when her life was so unfinished, when there were paintings to create and Tommy to raise and a whole life still to find?

Tommy, Clara thought and fear and grief rose up. "No, she can't be dead. Tommy just turned four, he needs his mother. He's just a baby, Richard. Sometimes she still has to rub his back to help him get to sleep. How can a four-year-old's mother be dead? He hasn't even started school or made a best friend or broken a bone or played a sport. Angela has to be there for those things, he's going to need her there. Little kids need their mothers. Angela would never leave Tommy, she would never leave her baby, she's not like that, because..."

The sobs finally over took her, and she clung to Richard. He knew his own tears were intermingling with hers. Angela dead, Tommy left motherless. He hadn't thought about that, and tightened his arms around Clara, knowing it was the motherless child within Clara making her understand the pain that little boy was about to go through.

Clara wasn't sure how long she lay against Richard crying. Angela's dead, her brain kept chanting, making it hard for her to think. "Angela said Jimmy went to Princeton? Booze run?"

"Yes," Richard said.

"Does he know? Is he coming home?"

"Gillian. Called him. He's not, he..."

He's not handling it well, Clara thought, and she felt a new flash of agony thinking of Jimmy's pain.

"Who killed her? Were they after Jimmy?"

Richard didn't answer.

She turned to look at him. "We can't have secrets. You came to get me, so now you have to tell me."

Richard swallowed, and began to tell her the tale of Manny Horvitz, Philadelphia butcher. How Mickey Doyle helped Jimmy make a deal with Horvitz to sell him booze. The warehouse that blew up with the promised booze inside. Jimmy's refusal to return Horvitz's money to him, Jimmy throwing Mickey off the balcony at Babette's, Mickey landing almost at Horvitz's feet. Finally, Jimmy paid the butcher but sent Mickey with the money instead of going to see the man in person.

We all killed Angela, Clara thought. I, because I keep Jimmy's secrets no matter what. I should have gotten her out of Atlantic City when this started. Jimmy, because he refused to deal with a situation he created. My father, because he blew up that warehouse. Gillian, because she manipulates Jimmy for her own reasons. And my father again, because he made Gillian.

Angela was dead, Clara's thoughts continued, because twenty-four years ago my father handed a twelve-year-old Gillian over to the Commodore. We are all paying for that original sin. 

"Okay, let's go get him."

Richard looked at her.

"Tommy needs his father. Jimmy has to come home, and Jimmy is...hurting. He needs us." Clara stood up. "Do you have a valise? It's so late we'll probably have to spend the night in Princeton."

Clara went to the dresser and started pulling things out. Richard had packed everything away carefully, she saw. Her toiletry bag had all of her things inside except for her bar of soap, which he had wrapped in paper. The book she was reading the night she left, clean step-ins, stockings, her old favorite summer dress she'd just gotten back from having altered and hadn't even worn yet, her kimono, all were still here.

"I knew. You left your. Favorite. Things. I didn't know. How to get them. To you."

She reached out and put her hand on his wrist. "I'm glad all of my favorite things were still here waiting for me.

Richard put the leather bag that he'd once used to carry the German sniper mask around with him on the bed. Clara handed him a pile of her things and he put them in the valise next to what he was taking.

The phone rang while Clara was taking her stockings off and changing into her straw flats for the drive.

"Mmm, Mrs. Darmody. I..."

Clara was across the room in a flash. "Let me," she whispered to Richard. "Gillian, how is Tommy?"

There was silence on the line. "Clara?"

"Richard and I are about to go get Jimmy. How's Tommy?"

"Tommy is with his Mema, so he's fine. He hasn't even asked about Angela. Do you think it necessary you go with Richard to get Jimmy? We don't really need your help, Clara."

"We'll call you. Tell Tommy we love him." Clara hung up and stared down at the phone. It felt like ice water was running through her veins.

"Are you. Ready?" Richard asked, valise in hand.

Clara nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to save Angela, I did. I love her, and I loved her relationship with everyone on the canvas. Unfortunately, her death changes everyone and I couldn't think of a way to continue the story without the impetus of her death.


	25. Do What We Must

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Angela's death, Clara and Richard try to help Jimmy and old memories resurface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Everything is more or less canonical, but mentions of suicide, incest, and child molestation.

**Princeton/Atlantic City: December 1916**

Her feet pained her terribly, and the smell of bacon was making her sick. The gentleman she was pouring coffee for told her about how terrible the never-ending Battle of Verdun was in Europe. Angela pasted a smile on her face.

As she poured him another refill, Angela watched a young woman walk hesitantly into the restaurant, like she wasn't sure she was in the right place. Unconsciously, Angela started noting details, mentally sketching her royal blue coat with navy blue cuffs, the blond curls that coiled heavily against her neck, the ringlets on either side of her face that grazed her jaw. The girl slipped the coat off and hung it on the peg by the booth. She was wearing an olive green jumper style tunic over a matching olive green skirt under the coat. The blouse under the jumper was striped olive green and light blue silk. Everything about her spoke of money. A college girl in town to visit her brother or beau, Angela decided. She drifted over to take the girl's order, internally betting that the girl would order coffee and toast and forget to leave a tip.

"What can I get you?"

The girl looked up and bit her lip. "Are you Angela Ianotti?"

"Yes?" Angela said. "Why are you asking?"

"I'm Clara Thompson. Jimmy, Jimmy Darmody, wrote me and asked me to come see you."

Angela sat the coffee pot down and burst into tears.

Clara stared at her for a moment, before jumping up and helping Angela into the booth. Reaching into her skirt pocket, she retrieved her handkerchief and pushed it into Angela's hand.

"Where is he?" Angela asked.

"He joined the Army. He's at Camp Grant, in Illinois."

"Why?"

"I don't know. One night last month Jimmy showed up at my college and told me he had left Princeton and enlisted. A few days ago I got a letter, telling me about you, about the baby."

Angela buried her face in her hands. Jimmy was gone, gone for real. Gone to the Army. "My aunt threw me out. I barely make enough money waitressing to rent a terrible room, much less pay for decent food. What am I going to do? What am I going to do when I can't work?"

"That's why I'm here," Clara said decisively. "You are going home with me. My father, he'll help you. Jimmy is like his son. He's like my brother. You are our responsibility."

Angela thought later that day that she would believe that Clara and Jimmy were really brother and sister. They had the same way of convincing someone to follow their plans, no matter how outlandish. Before she could even think, she had quit her job, packed up her scant belongings, stepped into Bamberger's so Clara could buy her an engagement ring, and was walking into the Ritz-Carlton in Atlantic City.

"Miss Clara! You are home a day early," a man with a German accent said when they arrived on the eighth floor.

"I missed you, too, Eddie," Clara said with a smile. "This is my friend, Angela Ianotti, she's going to stay with us."

"No one told me, I don't have a room..."

"She can stay with me."

Angela looked around Clara's room. She'd never seen a hotel room like it, and she'd spent her childhood in hotel rooms. It wasn't just that it was nice, although it was nicer than any hotel room Angela had ever been it. It was that someone so clearly lived there. Bookshelves lined one wall and were overflowing with books and pictures. Angela picked up a photograph of Jimmy and Clara as toddlers, let her finger brush over the image of Jimmy, and wondered if that's what their baby was going to look like, all floppy hair and pouty lips.

Clara drew a deep breath and knocked on her father's office door. So far, nothing in her day had gone according to plan. She'd just meant to check on Angela, see what she needed, and then come home to talk to her father. But once she knew Angela's aunt had thrown her out, once she'd seen Angela's desperation, what could she do? This was the girl Jimmy loved, this was his baby, she had to protect them.

"I'm guessing you know exactly where James is?" her father said in way of greeting. He didn't bother to get up from his desk.

"It's nice to see you as well, Daddy. I'm happy to be home for Christmas, thank you for asking," Clara replied with what she hoped was her most charming smile.

"Clara, today is not the day. Where is James?"

Clara bit her lip. "I don't know what happened, Daddy, I really don't. He came to Bryn Mawr one night night and told me he'd joined the Army. He's at Camp Grant, for basic training."

"He's where?" Nucky asked angrily. "Do you know how hard I worked to get him into Princeton? And he's thrown it away, why, because he couldn't cut it? And he's joined the Army? Does he even know there's a war in Europe that idiot Wilson is going to get us involved in?"

"I think that was the appeal, honestly. And Jimmy was doing well at Princeton, that's not why he left."

"James joined the Army because he wants to go war?"

"There's good news. Jimmy's engaged!" Clara said, trying to make her voice bright. "Her name is Angela Ianotti. She's very nice, you're going to like her a lot."

Nucky stared at his daughter. "James is engaged?"

Clara smiled. "Isn't it lovely? And that's not all, they are going to have a baby."

"James has knocked up some Princeton townie, ran off to join the Army, and left you to clean up his mess?" Nucky said in a dangerously low voice. "You have college to worry about, Clara."

"That's not fair, Daddy. Jimmy is... he's the only brother I have. Jimmy would do the same for me."

Would he, Nucky thought. "So I'm expected to support this girl and her baby?"

"Not just you, Daddy. I wouldn't ask that. Jimmy will send money from his Army pay, and I'm going to help, too."

"I didn't realize Bryn Mawr allowed its students to work."

Clara took a deep breath. "They don't. That's why I quit school. The War Department, they're advertising for girls who speak French or Italian. I speak both, Daddy. My Italian is better than my French, thanks to the sisters, but my French is still quite good. They are going to train us to be telegraph operators in France, behind the front lines, because like you said, it's not long until..."

"You want to work on the battlefield in France?" Nucky asked, his voice completely cold. He looked at his daughter, with her bright eyes and her freckles. Mabel, he thought, and pictured his wife when she was not much older than their daughter, before she was his wife, excitedly talking about teaching in the tenements of Newark. His sweet, innocent, idealistic Mabel.

Anger flared deep inside him. How dare Clara think he'd allow her to risk her life like this? How dare Mabel leave him to raise their girl on his own? He turned to look out the window, remembering coming home that evening before dinner because it was the housekeeper's afternoon off, and he was worried about Clara and Mabel being alone. The house had been as silent as a tomb except for a slight thumping noise coming from the bathroom. When he opened the bathroom door, he was greeted by a sea of red flowing across the white tile. It was Mabel's blood, and his warm Mabel was as cold and white as the tile itself as she lay in a heap in front of the sink.

He lifted his wife's body from the floor. For a moment, he tried to close the wounds on her wrists, tried to make her warm again, but already she was cold and heavy in his arms. The thumping noise continued. When he looked up, he saw their daughter rocking back and forth in a pool of her mother's blood, her head knocking against the lip of the tub. Their daughter, who already woke up screaming every night because she'd seen the rotting corpse of her baby brother, the one Mabel cared for instead of taking care of their living, breathing girl. At that moment, all he saw was blood all over his little girl's face, her plaid dress, her white stockings, her black buttoned boots. Eight years old and covered in her mother's blood. He dropped Mabel back to the floor, and grabbed his baby, called her name, tried to get her to talk.

Clara hadn't answered. Not when he took her into the other bathroom, washed her, and dressed her in a clean nightgown. Not when he rocked her, sitting on the stairs, ignoring his wife's body in the next room, just rocking his girl while her teeth chattered like she was freezing.

Clara didn't speak until Gillian brought James to sit in Clara's bedroom with her while she sat on the floor, holding her old velvet rabbit. That's when he heard his daughter's voice, saying, " _My Mommy's dead, Jimmy."_ When he swept Clara up to take her to the Ritz, he took James with them. Gillian was crying over Mabel like she had lost her mother. He couldn't leave either child with her.

Practically as soon as Clara could sit up, Mabel had put Jimmy and Clara in the bath together. Mabel had smiled up at Nucky as she'd washed both babies, and said, _'Gillian will always need help with Jimmy. If we treat them like siblings they'll always think of themselves as siblings.'_ How many nights had he gone into Clara's room to tell her goodnight, and seen two small fair heads laying on her pillow? Clara, who could tend toward selfishness, was never selfish when it came to James. If Clara got a treat, she expected James to get a treat. If Nucky took Clara on an outing, she wanted James to accompany them.

He had made so many mistakes raising Clara. The night of his party for the state government when Clara's scream echoed through the suite, and he found a drunk commissioner standing over his thirteen-year-old daughter in her nightgown. Eli had come to him the next day and told him the Ritz was no place to raise Clara. Eli and June wanted Clara to go live with them.

Like he was going to hand Clara over to Eli. Instead, he told James that one of his new jobs was to stay in Clara's room whenever Nucky had guests. Gillian had complained, but she never complained about the money. Sometimes he wondered if he should lock two teenagers up together, but Mabel's gambit had worked. He had warned James away from ever touching Clara. 'She's _like my sister, Nuck_ ,' James had said, clearly insulted. When he spoke to Clara about it, she'd looked up at him with horrified eyes and said, 'don't _be ridiculous, Daddy! Jimmy, he's my brother_.'

James was so nice and easy because he was a boy. They could go fishing, go hunting, and Nucky didn't always have to worry about protecting James from rough language or meeting the wrong people. It didn't mean he didn't have hopes and dreams for James. The boy was so bright, so personable, was even athletic—the All American Boy. Nucky had plans for James. Plans the little prick had just destroyed by running off and joining the Army. The Army, where he could be hurt, could be killed for a war over what? Protecting the holdings of inbred royals across the sea? Enriching the war barons here in America?

Clara and James were still just children, Nucky thought. Only in August, just a few months ago, he'd thrown a ball and for the first time, let them attend. They'd finally disappeared after the breakfast, and he found them both in Clara's room. James was asleep across the foot of her bed, Clara asleep across the head, both still in their fancy clothes like tired children after a birthday party.

James had already thrown his destiny to the winds. It felt like a knife to Nucky's soul, but what could he do? But his Clara, the little girl who loved nothing more than the stories about the mermaids that Mabel who used to tell her, who after her mother's death would tell the stories to James or to her rabbit, making the stories more complicated over the years, he was supposed to let her once more be covered with blood? He had failed to protect her once, but he'd be damned if he failed to protect her again.

"Absolutely not, Clara. James might have thrown his future away, but you will not follow suit. I have plans for your life."

Clara's eyes flashed with anger. "I have plans for my life! Do you know how rare it is for women to have the chance to work like this?"

"Work? You need to worry about school and finding a husband."

"If that's your only goal for me, then what better place to meet men than working with the Army?" Clara answered.

"I didn't raise you to marry some enlisted solider," Nucky snapped back. "And if you want me to help the girl James has abandoned, you best give up the idea of going to France."

Clara blinked, her dream of an adventure of her own choosing dying. Damn it, Jimmy, she thought, but she knew she'd already lost. "Okay, but I still want to work for the War Department, even if I have to do it in New York or Washington. It makes sense, really. Angela and I can share an apartment, and I can help cover her expenses."

Nucky sighed. He'd rather she stay safely on the campus of Bryn Mawr, but Clara was already taken with James's stray. At least the girl could function as Clara's chaperone.

**Princeton: July 1921**

Clara took a deep breath when they stood in front of Jimmy's hotel room door. Richard knocked loudly.

"Jimmy, it's Richard and me. Open the door," Clara called out. There was no response. "Open the door, or we are going to get the innkeeper to let us in!"

They heard shuffling from inside the room.

Only years of her father's training kept Clara from gasping when Jimmy opened the door. The room, and Jimmy, reeked of sweat and whiskey. There was another smell underneath it, one Clara couldn't identify. It was Jimmy's eyes that startled her the most. They looked like oysters on the half shell that had been left out in the sun. Jimmy's eyes were almost completely dilated, even with the bright hallway light shining in them.

"If you came to tell me Angela's dead, I already know," Jimmy said, swaying on his feet. "I didn't make the deliveries, Rich."

Richard swallowed. Did the deliveries still matter, he wondered? He saw Jimmy's small notebook and went over to begin flipping through the notes.

"I'd ask if you are okay, but you clearly are not," Clara said softly.

Jimmy lifted another bottle to his lips and slid down the wall. "It's my fault Angela's dead."

**New York City: July 1917**

Nothing about the day had gone as planned. First of all, Gillian appeared out of nowhere, right as Clara ran out to call for the midwife. The midwife wasn't available, so a substitute had to be found. Suddenly their little apartment felt like it was transformed into something else, as Angela hit a point where she couldn't hold back her cries of pain, and women rushed about to help her. Clara was dispatched to hold Angela's hand while Gillian flitted about and made sure she was the first person to hold Angela and Jimmy's baby.

The new baby stared up at Clara from his little basket. She could already see Jimmy in the shape of his face, and Angela in his tiny little eyes. Hesitantly, she reached out and gingerly touched his cheek. Jimmy's baby, how odd, she thought.

"You can pick him up, you know," Gillian said from the doorway.

"I can't, actually," Clara replied, smiling up at Gillian. "I've never held a baby."

Gillian started to say something, but then crossed over to the basket and lifted the small blanketed bundle out. "Hold your arms out, and then fold your elbow under his head."

Clara hesitated and then reached out. The small warm weight settled against her. She felt some of her love for Jimmy pour over to his son. You're one of mine, she thought fiercely as she smelled the sweet, soft smell of his head.

"Don't you just want to run your lips all over his little body?" Gillian asked.

No, Clara thought, but she did lean down and let her lips brush his forehead.

The midwife finished in the bedroom. Clara and Gillian walked with the baby back to Angela, and Clara carefully passed the baby back to his mother. Angela had never looked more beautiful, Clara thought and felt a sharp pang of despair that Jimmy was missing these first minutes of his new family.

"We need to name this little mite," Gillian said. "Obviously, we should name him for Nucky."

Angela looked up, surprised. She had been planning on naming him Joseph.

"Gillian, not only is that not necessary, but she can not name this baby Enoch," Clara said, struggling to keep her voice low. "And she certainly doesn't want to name him Malachi."

"Ah, of course," Gillian replied. "Well, what about Thompson?"

"It's just unnecessary," Clara protested.

"Thompson is such a big name for such a tiny baby, but I do want Mr. Thompson to know how grateful I am for all his help," Angela said softly.

"Well, we can always call him Tommy," Gillian said decisively.

"Hello, Tommy," Angela said softly, stroking her baby's cheek.

Later that afternoon, Gillian was napping on Clara's daybed in the living room, so Clara sat in the chair in the bedroom and watched Angela and Tommy sleep. Her own head was falling against the back of the chair when the bedroom door burst open.

"You finally have everything you wanted, don't you? You have Jimmy all to yourself," Gillian said in a voice Clara instantly recognized as her most angry. She was waving envelopes around, envelopes Clara recognized at a glance.

"He's in France, Gillian..."

"But he was with you in February, before he shipped out," Gillian said, handing a picture to Angela with menace written all over her face.

"He's in a uniform," Angela said in a quiet voice. "He's in a uniform, Clara. I thought you hadn't seen him since November, since he told you he enlisted."

Clara closed her eyes. "He sent me a telegram, asking me to spend a few days with him before he shipped out."

"He was here?" Angela asked with tears in her voice. "He was here, in New York? Did he know I was here?"

"He knew," Gillian said coldly. "He told her not to tell anyone, it was just for two of them to be able to see each other before he left."

"You said you were going to visit your friend Romola?" Angela said in disbelief.

"Jimmy didn't want me to tell anyone," Clara said softly. "I had to honor his wishes."

Angela looked down at her baby, tears falling on his face. Gillian looked up at Clara with something like triumph in her eyes.

"One day you'll love someone like we love James," Gillian said, "and you'll understand how this feels."

It was days later before Angela and Clara spoke about Jimmy. Angela wasn't surprised to find Clara standing by the bassinet. Over the last days, Clara often stood with her fingers lightly pressed against the baby's chest, like she was feeling for the rise and fall of his breathing.

"Tommy's not going anywhere," Angela said softly.

Clara looked up and bit her lip. "I'm so sorry, Angela."

"Why doesn't he want me, Clara?" Angela asked.

Clara sighed. "It's not that. I think he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to go if he saw you. It's the same with the letters. He barely writes me, just enough to say he's alive."

"You've written him about Tommy?"

"I have."

Angela looked up at Clara and swallowed her anger and hurt back down. Clara was the only friend she had at the moment. "Do you mind going to get bread?" she said, in an attempt to restore normalcy.

**Princeton: July 1921**

"I don't. Want to leave. You," Richard said as they stood against the door.

"I'll be with Jimmy," Clara answered. "If you have to make the deliveries, you have to make the deliveries."

Yes, Richard thought, but the butcher. The butcher is still out there. Jimmy has crawled down a bottle and other things besides. Angela's brain was shattered by a bullet in the bedroom she shared with Jimmy. A feeling of dread gnawed at him. Clara had been safe at Nucky's, or at least safer than she was now. He had pulled her into something darker and dangerous just because he wanted her.

Clara reached out and took his hand. "It's okay, really. This isn't the first tragedy Jimmy and I have seen each other through."

She looked back over at Jimmy, who was slumped against the wall. "It's not just alcohol, is it?"

Richard wouldn't look at her. She squeezed his hand.

"It's. Mmm. I think it's. Heroin."

"What's that?" Clara asked.

**New York City June 1918**

"I'm beginning to regret my decision to go," Clara told Angela while Angela slipped more of Tommy's belongings into a box." Tommy just started walking, and now I'm going to miss his first birthday. He'll be talking in complete sentences and have a favorite chop suey order by the time I get back."

"You've been plotting to get yourself to Europe since the moment I met you," Angela said, pushing down her anxiety about leaving the little world they had made on the Upper East Side and moving to Atlantic City while Clara steamed across the ocean. "There's no way you aren't going to go."

"Thank goodness Daddy is such a relentless social climber. The letter from Rose's mother, telling him how much they hoped he'd let me come to Europe and how I could spend my leaves at their manor house was like catnip. He couldn't resist. The fact that they've allowed Rose to work as a nurse on the front lines also helped, although he's still made me swear to stay away from France. I'm fairly certain Daddy's busy planning my marriage to the eldest son of a duke, and how he'll spend the rest of his life talking about his daughter, the Duchess of A Drafty Old Castle."

Angela laughed. "You're horrid. Your father loves you."

Clara smiled a little sadly. "He does love me. But Daddy... he's like a gambler, the kind who can't stop gambling."

Angela looked up at her, puzzled.

"The casino, sometimes Daddy would take us and I'd sit and watch people gamble. Some people gamble because they were having a night out and it was a fun thing to do, some people gamble to show off to their friends, but some people gamble because they couldn't not gamble. They were incapable of not making a bet. Daddy's incapable of not seeing the world by what advantages are available to him. So, yes, he loves me, but he's planned my entire life by what advantages I can bring him. When I was little, my mother and I made him look like a dependable family man. Then I was the motherless daughter holding her brave father's hand, which bought him votes. Sending me to Foxcroft brought a new echelon of people into his social circle, and gave me entry into social levels that he can't reach. Even working at the War Department, he pulled strings and found me a job where I meet people he considers desirable. Uncle Eli says he talks in hushed tones about letting me leave school and work for the good of the country when that's not anything like what he thinks. I know he basically smacks his lips when he thinks about marrying me off, to someone who will raise Nucky Thompson's profile, or bring him new political contacts, or get him written about in the society pages of the _New York Times_."

"What advantage does looking after Tommy and I offer Nucky?" Angela asked quietly.

It puts Jimmy in Daddy's debt, Clara thought with a flash of clarity. We won't be children when this over, and Daddy's still furious with Jimmy. He'd like Jimmy to feel indebted.

"Daddy takes his responsibilities very seriously," Clara answered.

**Princeton July 1921**

Clara woke up with the side of her face pressed against the floor and her blue knit sailors dress clinging to her body. She peered at the clock on the mantel and saw it wasn't quite midnight. Some days last years, Clara thought. It was just that morning she'd bathed, dressed in this blue dress she now never wanted to wear again and went with her father and Margaret to retrieve Emily from the hospital. It was just after lunch that Richard appeared in Margaret's foyer and said he loved her, that he needed her.

You were right, Angela, Clara thought. You'll be pinning flowers in my hair for my wedding. A wave of grief slammed against her so hard her body clenched in pain. It was selfish grief, she knew, but it still sliced against her with razor-sharp blows. Who was she going to tell about Richard in that foyer, who was going to celebrate when her _Bobbsey Twin_ book was published, who would she giggle with over red wine or whiskey sours? Who knew all her little secrets?

"She was so beautiful," Jimmy said blearily.

Clara rolled over so she could see him. He was lying on his stomach with an empty whiskey bottle so near his mouth it made her think of Tommy as a baby, when he'd fall asleep with a bottle on the pillow next to him. She blinked at the idea of Angela being beautiful in the past tense.

"When I met her, she had these long brown curls, and she was just the sweetest person I'd ever known. I hurt her so much. I was the worst thing that ever happened to her."

Tell him that's not true, Clara thought, her urge to fix things for Jimmy rising. "She loved you," was what she landed on. Clara's mind fixated on the that it was their fault Angela was dead.

I promised to take care of her, Clara remembered. I failed. We failed.

"Being back here, it's like I can feel her, like she was before the war."

"Like she was when she was scared and told your she was going to have a baby and you responded by joining the Army and not speaking to her or even writing her for a little over three years?"

"Fuck you, Clara," Jimmy hissed and then turned away from her. She heard the sound of paper rustling.

Clara pounced and landed with a thud on top of Jimmy.

"God damn it, Clara, get off me."

"What the fuck, Jimmy? Remember Tommy? This is how you make it up to Angela for what we did to her, by crawling into some drugged out numbness?"

He grabbed her arm and twisted with a quick move, which resulted in Clara with her back on the floor and Jimmy looming over her.

It was the way her bright eyes looked up at him, with her fair hair falling over her cheek and her chest rising with rapid breaths. For a moment, he forgot it was Clara underneath him. For a moment, her hair took on a reddish hue, her freckles disappeared, and he didn't see his sister.

For the first time in their lives, Clara wasn't safe locked in a room with Jimmy, because for the first time, he didn't see her.

He saw his mother.

**Atlantic City: November 1918**

Angela startled awake, her head feeling like a drum was beating inside of it. She and Clara had finished off a bottle of red wine after Tommy went to sleep. Clara had fallen asleep in the bed next to her, but now Angela was alone. Rubbing her eyes, she saw Clara was sitting on the floor next to Tommy's cot, rubbing his back.

"Is he okay?" Angela whispered when she crawled to the end of the bed.

"He woke up, so I rubbed his back until he fell back asleep," Clara whispered back.

The moonlight streamed over Clara's face, and Angela desperately wanted her pencils. When Clara stepped off the train two days ago, Angela had been taken back by how different she looked from the young woman who left in June. The apple-cheeked fullness was gone from her face, the circles under her eyes were so dark they looked like bruises, and she'd clearly lost a lot of weight.

With the moonlight casting shadows, Clara looked even thinner and more delicate. Her clavicle was worrying visible under the open neck of her pajama top, and Angela imagined her skeleton was noticeably visible under the thin skin of her face. It was only two years since Clara had walked into that Princeton diner, but suddenly she looked at least ten years older.

"I'll put the kettle on," Angela said quietly. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she sliced bread and spread jam across it.

Clara sipped the tea and toyed with the bread. Angela tried to remember if she'd seen Clara take more than a bite or two since she'd been back.

"What happened?" Angela finally asked.

"It's not like I was in the trenches or anything," Clara answered.

No, Angela thought, but something happened. It was written in the darkness in Clara's eyes.

"You know, that day I found myself following you back to Atlantic City, I was in your room thinking, what have I done. I barely knew Jimmy, and I didn't know you at all. And then I saw _Seventeen_ on your bookshelf, picked it up, and thought, this girl has terrible taste in books _._ But then you came back into the room, asked what I thought about living in New York, and asked if I had read that book because it was hard to believe the same man who wrote _The Turmoil_ wrote that tripe. I knew any girl who hated _Seventeen_ was a girl I'd get along well with."

"Well, and after living with you, my taste in art definitely improved. I didn't understand futurism at all until you took me to every exhibit in the city," Clara answered with a smile. "We had fun, didn't we?"

Angela covered Clara's hand with her own. "Clara, I never was in one place long enough to make a real friend, not one like you."

"You, Rose and Romola are the only real girl friends I've ever had," Clara said quietly. "And as close as I am with them..."

They sat quietly as the first light of day started filtering through the kitchen window.

Clara took a deep breath. She carefully chose her words, because, as the pain in her heart knew all too well, what she experienced wasn't a patch on what Jimmy experienced. The place where warmth used to live in her soul felt barren, so what was Jimmy going through? How could she add to Angela's worry?

"We were setting up a communication station and temporary headquarters in an area with a field hospital. The end of the war," Clara swallowed, "it was just...relentless. The Huns knew they were losing, but they wouldn't stop. They attacked the hospital." She stopped talking.

Angela felt all the empty spaces were the words Clara should be speaking but wasn't. "Is there something else?"

Clara pulled her hand away. "It's foolish."

"You aren't a foolish person," Angela thought for a moment. "A man?" she asked softly, watching Clara's hands destroy the toast into crumbs." You fell in love?"

"I always thought falling in love would be ball breakfasts and walking through the moonlight and kissing in the rain," Clara whispered.

"You were with him?"

Clara nodded without looking up.

Angela exhaled deeply. Suddenly, she was seized with the desire to tell Clara about Mary, to tell Clara how desperately lonely she had been after Clara climbed the gangway of the ship that was going to take her on a grand adventure in Europe. Angela decamped to a small apartment in a city she'd barely seen. Gillian, Jimmy's mother, who looked like an older sister, was the only person she knew. Gillian had limited patience for a messy baby, and the lonely girl her son had knocked up. And then she had taken Tommy into the photography studio to have his picture made and fell into conversation about the elements of composition in photographs with the pretty assistant.

Mary. Suddenly her life had new purpose, new meaning. Conversations with someone who cared about art, about creativity gave new depth to her days. Going to bed with Jimmy was terrific, but with Mary, it was even better. Mary knew exactly how to use her hands and mouth to play Angela's body like a violin. It was a level of connection and pleasure beyond anything Angela ever knew. As soon as Mary left, Angela started counting the moments until they could see each other again.

"Is there any chance?" Angela asked, seized with worry.

Clara shook her head. "I've had my monthly since then."

Good, Angela thought. Clara was strong. She would survive a broken heart. An out of wedlock child was harder to overcome.

"There's no chance?"

Clara shook her head again. They continued to sit quietly in the gentle morning light, Angela noting subconsciously how her kitchen looked as the day slowly broke over Atlantic City.

"Where is Jimmy?" Angela asked suddenly.

At Walter Reed, Clara thought, he almost died, the doctor's saved his leg only by the miracle of modern science. I don't know that he'll ever walk again. I don't know that he'll ever break through the shell of his anger. It's why I accepted the job in D.C., so I can go visit.

"Waiting for transport back to the States like everyone else," Clara responded, keeping her promise to her oldest love and breaking one to her dearest friend.

**Princeton: July 1919**

For one wild moment, Clara thoughtJimmy was going to kiss her. Was that lust in his eyes, she thought, shock freezing her in place for a moment, and then she felt him growing against her the top of her thigh.

"Jimmy, stop! Get off me!"

He stared at her blankly, and Clara's stomach soured with fear and confusion. "It's me, Jimmy! It's Clara! It's me, Clara!"

Clara, he thought, her terrified face coming back into focus. Oh, damn, Clara. He rolled off and fought the urge to vomit.

Clara scrambled to her feet and moved across the room.

"I was happy, Clara. I had Angela. I liked school. And then Ma came."

Oh no, Clara thought, no. In her wild anger and hurt that night at Babette's, she had hissed at Richard _'he is extraordinarily loyal to the woman he beds.'_ She had known in her soul, she had worried, she had thought, but she hadn't known for sure. Not until now.

"Jimmy, I'm so sorry," she breathed out. She meant she was sorry it happened. She meant she was sorry she had mocked him.

"There was this professor, I really liked him. When Ma came, we went to this party and she said he did things to her. He didn't realize she was my mother, he..."

He didn't do it, Clara instinctively thought. Gillian couldn't bear to see Jimmy flourishing away from her, in a world where she would never have a place.

"I'd introduced Ma and Angela, and she kept asking if I loved that skinny girl..."

A ghost of a smile crossed over Clara's face. Gillian's jealousy. "Gillian's always been jealous of anyone you cared about." She's been jealous of me since I was probably still inside my mother's body. But when my breasts came in? Clara shuddered at the memories.

"She said how lonely she was, Clara, that she was the loneliest person in the world."

Of course she said that, Clara thought. She's always made her happiness, her contentment your job in life. You should have stayed in the Army. You should have stayed away from Atlantic City, from her, from us.

"She was really drunk, and I was just helping her, and then Clara, somehow I was, I was, and she's my mother.."

"No," Clara said, crossing the room and grabbing Jimmy's hands. "She's your mother, you are her child. It's not your fault, Jimmy, she was always, even when we were children she would..." Clara grasped for the ability to put into words what she had known since childhood. "She didn't behave like a mother would."

"Was that the only time?" Clara asked, remembering their childhood, remembering Gillian's jealousy, how she needed to own Jimmy, to always be the first thing in his life, the first in his heart, the first...

"Jimmy," she asked again. "Was that the only time?"

He shook his head slowly.

**Atlantic City: December 1919**

How many times had she attended her father's parties at Babette's, she wondered as she stood on the balcony and watched the party her father had thrown to welcome her home spin? He'd started teaching her how to plan them when she was ten or so, her first task using her convent school handwriting to address envelopes. Clara smoothed the blue satin underdress under the spiky, black velvet vest that covered the dress's top. It was like the war never happened, because the party certainly never stopped.

"Having a good time, kiddo?" Nucky asked. He had been watching her all night. He had fucking known that he shouldn't let her go to Europe. She'd looked skeletal and haunted when she'd returned last year. Clara always looked like Mabel, but in those horrible days she'd looked like Mabel towards the end. Nucky pushed the thought away. Clara was a Thompson. She'd survived that girlish foolishness, and look at her now. Healthy and wearing a beautiful Worth evening gown, looking like the princess she was. Oh, she was quieter and less spirited than she had been at eighteen, but that was just maturity. She had grown up.

It's how he knew he had made the right decision.

"It's a lovely party, Daddy, thank you." Clara took a deep breath. "We need to talk about Jimmy."

Nucky gritted his teeth. "James made his decisions. Now it's time for you to make yours."

Clara didn't say anything. What decisions? The men were back, she'd lost her job with the War Department and moved back from D.C. There wasn't much she'd remember fondly from the last year. Jimmy's pain and fury, her own numb darkness...and then the nights in her room, where she started writing a novel about pirates that was absolutely terrible as an attempt to stave off the nightmares from her childhood that had returned in the aftermath of Europe. Writing that awful book made her write other things, though, and she'd sold her first article in October. She knew she didn't want to stop writing. She knew her father wasn't going to be happy. He wanted her to be the society girl he'd raised her to be now that she was back.

"Did you meet Darcy Blaine?" Nucky asked

Clara thought back over everyone she had met. Ah, she thought, the good looking young man who was spent a few minutes chatting with her talking only about himself and the things he owned.

"Yes."

Nucky's eyes narrowed. Clara was so different, what was wrong with her? It came to him like a revelation.

"There was someone during the war?"

Clara's cheeks flamed, and she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Who?" Nucky asked. "Who was it?"

Clara didn't answer. There's no way to explain it, Daddy, she thought, the memories she'd worked hard to push down threatening to bubble back up. "It's not like I had a real war, it's not like what Jimmy went through," Clara half-whispered, barely aware she'd spoken.

"You've seen James," Nucky breathed out. Damn it, he thought. After all these years, after he impregnated Angela and had Tommy to look after, now was when James breached the childhood bond between he and Clara?

Clara's hands traced the handkerchief hem of the vest. "He's been at Walter Reed since January. Rather, he was. He was discharged a couple of weeks ago and disappeared. But Angela and Tommy are here, he'll come home soon enough."

God damn James, Nucky thought. "You've known where James was this whole time?"

Clara bit her lip and nodded.

Now he was confident he was doing the right thing. "I know what I'd like for you to give me for Christmas."

"Okay," Clara asked, a little thrown by the quick change of topic. "What is it?"

"Darcy Blaine is going to ask you to marry him. You are going to accept."

Clara half-laughed out of shock. "What? We've barely exchanged a hundred words."

"He's the son of one of the most powerful political families in the state, Clara." My world is going to change, Nucky thought. You'll be better off away from me, in a family with their own estates, before Prohibition changes everything. Before James comes back.

"I can't marry someone I don't love," Clara said, horrified.

"Apparently you loved someone but it didn't bring you happiness," because James is still an irresponsible child who wasn't content with saddling you with his mistress and his baby, he needed to toy with you as well, Nucky thought furiously. "So why not chose to make a life with someone who can make you happy?"

"Darcy Blaine couldn't keep me interested for five minutes of conversation."

"Don't be childish, Clara. You've had your great adventure. It's time to grow up and live the life you were meant to live," Nucky answered. "After all, you are going to want me to take James in when he returns, aren't you?"

Clara gasped. "You want me to marry someone I don't love, that I don't even know if I like, and in return you'll let Jimmy work for you?"

"I'll let him exist in Atlantic City."

She stood on the balcony and watched people she'd known her whole life dance beneath her. Was that all love was going to be for her, she wondered, a bright flame that disappeared so quickly sometimes it felt more like a dream? And now she was going to give up any chance of finding it again to marry a man her father picked out, to make him happy, to secure Jimmy's future? To make sure Angela and Tommy were provided for?

What did it matter, she thought tiredly. She couldn't remember the last time she really felt anything anyway.

"Merry Christmas, Father."

**Princeton/Atlantic City: July 1921**

Richard watched his car on the road in front of him, where Clara was driving carefully through the New Jersey night with Jimmy next to her. Tiredness bit at him, but he pushed it away as he drove Jimmy's car (the clutch on Jimmy's car had been acting up for months, and he hadn't wanted Clara to have to deal with it, so he had handed her the keys to his car. There was no way Jimmy was in any shape to drive). He'd been awake for thirty-six hours, but he had been awake for longer.

But had any thirty-six hours ever felt longer? Angela's cold, pale body. Mr. Thompson glaring at him while he stood in Mrs. Schroeder's house and told Clara he loved her. Clara back in his room, and then going after Jimmy, who had fallen down into a bottle of booze and one of Luciano's paper packets of heroin. Trying to make sense of the deliveries in Jimmy's notebook.

When he opened the door to the room at the Inn, exhausted to his core from running back and forth to Atlantic City to fulfill Jimmy's orders, he saw Jimmy and Clara sitting together in the back of the room. For a moment, a fierce pang of missing Emma sliced through him.

Richard didn't know it, but it was the way they sat as children when life went wrong. Against a wall, Clara's knees pulled up to her chest, Jimmy's legs akimbo, leaned against each other, the only nod to adulthood the cigarette they silently passed back and forth. Light had flooded the room and receded once more, but neither knew what time it was when Richard opened the door.

Clara walked out with Richard when he took their unopened valise to the car.

"Is he. Okay?" Richard asked.

"No, he's not," Clara turned, so she was looking out over the railroad. "Jimmy is going to need our help."

Richard waited, feeling Clara was going to say more. "He'll need you of course, for whatever it is the two of you are going to do, but he'll need both of us to help with Tommy."

"His. Mother won't help. With Tommy?"

Clara turned to him, and the look on her face was fierce and haunted. "If it takes every last breath in my body, I'll make sure Gillian won't get her hands near Tommy ever again," her voice broke. "I failed Angela. I lied to her, I chose Jimmy over her, I wasn't ever as good a friend to her as she was to me. And Jimmy...he failed her, too. So this is what we are going to do. We are going to protect Tommy."

Richard thought about those words as they entered Atlantic City, parked in front of the Commodore's heavily turreted mansion, and Mrs. Darmody opened the front door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of following canon more or less faithfully. From now on, anything can happen. I'd love to hear what you think is about to occur!


	26. I'm So Glad You're Here-July 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara discovers a new side to herself. Richard is surprised by her actions.

**The Commodore's Mansion**

Clara crept into the bedroom where Tommy slept, not wanting to wake him. He was so tiny, she thought as she watched him from across the room, so little and absolutely defenseless in the huge bed topped with carved lion heads. Casting shadows on the bed like creatures from a nightmare were the stuffed corpses of big game animals his grandfather had slaughtered. It wasn't a fit nursery for any child. Tommy needed to be home, in his own little bed, with his own, less terrifying things around him.

"Clara?" a small voice called from the depths of the blankets.

"Hey, kiddo," she whispered and moved to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Where's my mommy?" Tommy asked fretfully.

Her heart skipped a beat. "Daddy is downstairs, Richard is coming soon, and I'm here now," Clara said.

Tommy looked up at her with sad eyes. "Mema said Mommy moved to Paris because she wanted to be with her friends. Mema says now she's my mommy."

Clara couldn't hide her sharp intake of breath. A cold chill ran down her spine at the idea of Gillian declaring herself Tommy's mother. She was grateful that the room was only lit by moonlight so that Tommy couldn't see her face. Damn Gillian to hell and back, she thought fiercely, how dare she tell this baby his mother had left him of her own accord.

"Tommy, your mommy would never leave you of her own choice, never ever," Clara answered while she rubbed his hands. "She loves you so much. And she'll always be your mommy, okay? She'll always be the only mommy you'll ever have. Mema is Mema, she's not your mother."

"But where is Mommy, Clara?" Tommy pressed.

Clara grasped for an answer. Jimmy needed to be the one to tell his boy Angela was dead, and she couldn't think of what to tell Tommy that wasn't a lie but that would comfort him so he could go back to sleep.

Screams shattered the quiet stillness of the night. Deep, guttural ones, but also a high pitched one. Tommy grabbed Clara's arm. Clara patted his hand as she tried to decipher the noises.

"It's going to be okay," she said in the most reassuring voice she could muster. "Tommy, do you know how to lock a door?"

Tommy looked scared. "Mema says don't lock doors in her house."

It's not, Clara thought angrily, her fucking house. Clara swallowed around the lump of fear and anger in her throat and calmed her voice before responding. "Well, Daddy said I'm in charge of you, and I say it's all right. Lock the door. Only open it for Daddy, Richard, or me, okay?"

Richard was making one last run to the warehouse to deal with the booze orders from Northern New Jersey, but she wished desperately he was at the haunted house from hell with her. From the second floor landing, she watched carefully before revealing herself. Jimmy was sprawled on the floor. Another dark shape lay slumped on the floor behind Jimmy. The Commodore. Gillian stood over both of them. The horror of the scene-the blood, the bodies-made her go silent and still. Clara shook off the feeling and ran down the stairs.

"What happened?"

Gillian looked up, and Clara saw pure, unadulterated triumph in Gillian's eyes for just a moment before Gillian softened her face. "Oh, Clara, I'm so glad you're here! The Commodore stabbed James. James killed his father."

Clara was already sliding to her knees next to Jimmy. You've never been happy for me to be anywhere around Jimmy, Clara thought bitterly as she examined Jimmy's wound. Blood was seeping out of a deep wound on the upper left of his back, but his pulse was steady under her fingertips when she touched his neck. It was a big, deep wound. She looked over at the Commodore and saw his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. There was no doubt he was dead.

"Have you called Dr. Surran?" Clara asked and looked back up at Gillian.

Gillian looked like a queen, Clara thought. Like she was assuming power as Jimmy's blood pooled under Clara's hand and the Commodore lay dead a few feet ahead. On the floor next to the Commodore, Clara noticed a piece of needlework and an open sewing basket.

Not that Clara mourned the Commodore, she thought as she tried to take it all in. She just wished he wasn't dead by Jimmy's hand, for Jimmy's sake, for Tommy's, because once more Gillian would hold power over Jimmy...a glimmer of a plan to started to form in her mind. Clara looked down at Jimmy's wound and pretended to be studying it while she weighed her options.

What would my father do? Clara thought. How would he use this situation to help him achieve his goals?

Her stomach turned and her heart rate sped up. She took a deep breath. Clara didn't see another option.

"Gillian," she said in a voice heavy with emotion and unshed tears. "You must call Dr. Surran, this is so much blood, Jimmy needs a doctor."

Gillian didn't move.

"You also need to call Mr. Whitlock," Clara said, desperation rising in her voice. "We have to protect Jimmy. Mr. Whitlock will know what to do about the Commodore."

Gillian nodded and moved towards the conservatory where the telephone was located.

Clara leaped into action. She reached into Jimmy's pocket and searched for his handkerchief. Instead, she found two more paper packets of heroin. Quickly, she shoved them into her brassiere and reached into his other pocket to retrieve his handkerchief and covered her bloody hand with the linen cloth. With great care she opened the sewing box and searched through the contents until she found what she needed.

Pinking shears.

Bile rose in her throat as she crawled over to the Commodore's prone body, picking up Gillian's dropped needlepoint and yanking it from its hoop as she went. Jimmy's trench knife rose from his father's unmoving stomach. Clara took a deep breath and steadied her nerves before she wrapped her hand around the trench knife and pulled it out with all her strength. The wet, gloppy noise as the suction of the Commodore's body gave up the knife made her gag. She carefully wrapped the knife in the needlepoint, grabbed the pinking shears, and plunged them into the existing wound. Clara closed her eyes and prepared for a spray of blood that never happened. Oh, of course, she realized. His heart is no longer beating.

Pushing the thought away, she pulled the shears out and repeated the process with the other wounds as quickly as she could, feeling the edges of the wounds give way under her hand as she purposefully changed the shape of the wounds. She tried to think of other things as she pushed the scissors into the Commodore's rapidly cooling flesh. The smell of the ocean as she walked across the Boardwalk. The swirls of paint as Angela mixed her colors. Just another smell, she thought. Just more colors mixing, that's all.

Clara grabbed a bottle of whiskey and poured some over Jimmy's trench knife, purposefully splashing whiskey on the ground and grabbing two glasses which she set rolling across the floor. As she ran back to Jimmy's side she cleaned the knife with the needlepoint. Feeling around the top of his boot she finally felt the knife sheath, inserted his knife, and pulled his pant leg back down. Grabbing both the needlepoint and Jimmy's handkerchief she held both against his wound, making sure they were soaked with blood. Looking down at her sensible navy blue knit sailor's dress, she was glad she chose a dark dress, what, forty hours ago? In a different life, she'd pulled this dress on in her guest room at Margaret's.

Gillian wasn't dressed sensibly, Clara thought. Gillian was wearing an acid green silk gown. Every drop of blood would show on it.

"Thank god you're back," Clara called as she heard Gillian's footsteps approaching and then Clara let every emotion flood over her and let them be heard in her voice. "Gillian, I think Jimmy might be dying. He's bleeding so badly, we have to get him sitting up, we need to slow the blood loss."

The terror on Gillian's face at the idea Jimmy was bleeding to death was real, and Clara felt a pang of regret.

 _'It wasn't the first time,'_ Jimmy had said in a haunted voice, and the burgeoning regret was replaced with fury over what Gillian did to her son, what power over him could still mean, and terror over what Gillian could do to the motherless Tommy.

"Why don't you help hold him up," Clara said sweetly. "He'll feel better knowing his mother is holding him." Forgive me Jimmy, Clara silently begged. Watching Gillian touch Jimmy's unconscious form made Clara want to retch.

When the doorbell rang, Jimmy was leaned against his mother, who was absolutely covered in his blood.

"Dr. Surran, please come in," Clara said and directed him to Jimmy. Please save him, Clara prayed. Please. Tommy can't be an orphan.

Clara ran up the stairs while Gillian was distracted. "Tommy, open the door," she whispered urgently. She needed to move Tommy to somewhere only she knew, and she needed him closer to the drawing-room in case she needed to leave quickly.

Tommy's eyes were red and he threw himself into her arms. "It's okay, baby," she whispered in the brightest voice she was capable of as she smoothed his hair back and kissed his forehead.

She smiled her best smile at Tommy. "Everything is okay, but you and I are going to play a game now. When your daddy and I were little, we'd play hide and go seek when Nucky would bring us here. I'm going to show you our best hiding place, and you are going to stay there and be very quiet until when?"

"Until you or Daddy or Richard finds me," Tommy answered, clutching his stuffed cow.

"That's right, kiddo. Just daddy or Richard or me, no one else."

Once Tommy was safely hidden on the landing in the armoire with the metal fretwork doors, Clara rejoined everyone, murmuring comforting words to Gillian as the doctor cut away the remains of Jimmy's vest and shirt. Jimmy loved that suit, Clara remembered as the fabric fell away. The first time she'd seen him wear it he'd shown her the peaked lapels.

The doorbell rang again. Please be Richard, please be Richard, she hoped as she opened it.

"Oh, Mr. Whitlock, thank god you are here," Clara said, the emotion in her voice real. Jimmy was pouring blood in the drawing-room and Tommy was in peril, she reminded herself. She looked up at Leander Whitlock with all the girlish urgency and fear she was capable of and prayed her story would hold. "Gillian has killed the Commodore and Jimmy was stabbed trying to stop the fight between his parents. I didn't know what to do other than call you."

"Louis is dead?" Mr. Whitlock with shock evident in his voice.

Clara felt a flash of sympathy. Mr. Whitlock was so old, and, although she found it hard to believe, truly was fond of the Commodore. Perhaps she shouldn't have involved him.

Nonsense, she thought. She needed him. Jimmy needed him. If Mr. Whitlock thought Jimmy killed his father it would lose Jimmy a valuable ally and all of the support of the Yacht Club. It would mean the man wouldn't be her ally in the fight. Needs must, she told herself, and then took a deep breath as heart beat so fast it felt like it was going to leave her chest, and told her story. She saw the anger rise in his face.

"Oh, Leander, thank you so much for coming," Gillian cried when they walked into the drawing-room.

Leander didn't answer, walking around the doctor bandaging James over to where Louis lay on the floor. Immediately he noticed the sewing scissors protruding from his friend's torso, and the empty glasses under the davenport. Damn Gillian to hell, Louis thought. Other than it bringing forth James, telling Nucky to bring him that harridan was the worst bit of business Louis ever conducted.

The doorbell rang again, and Leander watched the Thompson girl leave to answer it. Gillian stared at him from across the room.

"Leander, I knew you'd know exactly what to do," Gillian began.

Clara opened the door and stepped into Richard's space, wrapping her arms around him. The warm solidness of his body against hers almost made her resolve almost crumble, giving her a flash of comfort and safety in the midst of bloody insanity.

"Mmm," he swallowed. "Clara?"

She took a deep breath. It was one thing to tell Richard what happened. It was another to admit she had purposefully framed Gillian, that she had plunged shears into the Commodore's dead body in a desperate attempt to save Tommy and Jimmy. Her stomach twisted with anxiety at admitting everything to Richard.

"I did it to protect Tommy and Jimmy," she whispered in his ear.

Richard stared at his feet and didn't answer when she finished and stepped back. Clara's fingers twisted the now-limp pleats of her dress. He finally reached out and covered her hand with his.

"Take him. To my. Mmm. Place. I'm going to stay to help. Jimmy. Then I'll come home."

Clara laced her fingers through his and smiled up at him uncertainly. Even as they stood there together, fear that her actions had changed how he thought of her gnawed at her heart.

"Mr. Harrow, good," Leander said when they walked into the drawing-room, where blood covered the floor and the wallpaper. "We require your assistance."

You owe this to Angela, Clara reminded herself as she prepared to strike the final blow. This is the only way.

"Mr. Whitlock, this is not an appropriate place for Tommy. I'm going to take him until Jimmy recovers," Clara said in her best Princess of the Boardwalk voice, the one her father worked so hard to instill in her.

"What?" Gillian said in disbelief. "Clara, you are not taking my grandson anywhere."

The look Clara shot Gillian was the most dismissive glance she was capable of. "Mr. Whitlock, do you think we should leave Tommy with the woman who killed his grandfather?"

Please no one ask Richard anything, she thought. Please please please please please.

"What? I didn't kill Louis! James did!" Gillian cried out in shock and outrage.

"Gillian, try to hold onto some kind of honor," Leander said wearily. "Louis's heir will be safe with Miss Thompson until James recovers."

"She's not taking Tommy! Tommy is mine, that little boy, he's mine. I didn't hurt Louis, Leander! It was James! It was James!" Gillian cried out desperately.

"What kind of mother accuses her child of her crime?" Clara asked coldly, trying to infuse shock and disbelief in her voice. "And anyway, Tommy is not yours. He had a mother. He has a father."

"You aren't his mother either," Gillian hissed. "Is that what this is about? Your little rebellion with this remnant of a man, but not even you will go so far as to..."

The last strands of Clara's composure snapped. Before either man could react, Clara was moving across the floor towards Gillian. As her arm arched back for momentum, Richard caught up with her and pulled her back.

"Gillian, enough!" Whitlock said sharply. "You are incredibly fortunate that Clara didn't call the sheriff's office, that she told you to call me instead. I can fix this, but not if you'd been arrested for murder. She's going to take the child to safety. Please try to behave with some sense of decorum."

"No! She can't take Tommy!"

"I believe James would want her to take the boy, I believe it's what Louis would desire as well. She's taking the boy."

Richard followed Clara up the stairs, not bothering to ask why Tommy was in a cabinet.

"It's Richard and me," Clara whispered as she opened the doors to the armoire. Tommy was sound asleep, his cheek resting on the toy cow.

Richard carried the sleeping child with his left arm, leaving his right arm free. Mrs. Darmody cried in a chair in the drawing-room they walked towards the front door, but Richard pushed it from his mind. Clara had made it look like Mrs. Darmody killed the Commodore. She must have her reasons. Clara never even spared a glance for the crying woman.

For a moment he considered driving with them to his place, but he thought of the horror show inside the mansion. The Commodore's body needed to be dealt with, the mess cleaned up, Jimmy watched over. He carefully placed Tommy in the backseat of his car, and turned back to Clara, hesitating as to what he should do next.

"I want. To go with. You. Mmm. But..."

Even now, Jimmy's need of you outweighs mine, Clara thought. She tried to push away the thought-after all, what had she just done for Jimmy, for Tommy? She forced her voice to stay level and not show her fear and her need for Richard to go with them.

"Jimmy, I know," Clara said, even managing a small smile to make him feel better. "Tommy and I will be okay."

Richard hesitated, and then slid his hand into his waistband and brought forth the Mauser pocket pistol and pressed it into her hand.

"Do you think I need this?"

He couldn't meet her eye. "I think. You'll be fine. But. Hmm. I'd feel..."

Clara closed her hand around the gun. The butcher is still out there, she realized. Nothing has stopped. It stopped for me, because Angela was dead and Jimmy was in distress, and now this. But the Butcher, my father, Charlie, Capone...it's all still out there.

"You can. Shoot. There's extra ammunition..."

She leaned forward and kissed the side of his mouth. "We'll be okay. Just come home when you can."

**Richard's**

When Richard opened the door to his room he saw Clara sitting cross-legged on the bed, gun in her lap, the way she usually sat up with a book at night when he would come home. On the floor next to the desk, Tommy was sound asleep in the moonlight, on a pallet Clara must have made out of her pillow and extra blankets.

Clara smiled as he approached her, "I'm so glad you're here."

He sat on the bed next to her, looking down at his hands. The tiredness was washing over him, making it almost impossible to think clearly. The last time he slept was the morning he found out Angela was dead. Slowly he became aware of the feeling of Clara's fingers-warm, alive, moving-pressing against his.

"Jimmy is. Going to be. Okay." I cleaned his father's blood from the drawing-room, Richard thought. Once more in these days, I cleaned the blood of Jimmy's family member from the floorboards. There's no trace left. I cleaned the scissors you used. He looked at her small hand, and tried to imagine it plunging scissors into an old man's body. The hands that had tucked Tommy in, that slid into his, that typed out her stories.

He was a hypocrite, he realized. What did his hands do when he was away from Clara?

Clara nodded. "Good. Tommy thinks this is great fun, spending the night at your place."

Richard shook his head. "You should. Put him in bed. With you. I'll sleep on the. Floor."

"He's little, sleeping on the floor is an adventure. Besides, I..." She stared into the distance. "We just got each other back, and had maybe ten minutes of just being together. My friend is dead. Jimmy is injured. Everything is crashing down around us. I did a horrible thing to protect Jimmy and Tommy. You've been awake from days trying to protect Jimmy, I..."

Richard leaned against her. He couldn't remember the last time his brain had been so foggy, France, he supposed. Thoughts came into view and then disappeared just as quickly before he could grasp onto them. The silk of Clara's kimono brushed against his forearm. Her hair was slightly damp, and he could smell her orange soap. Her hands weren't as soft as usual, and he could see redness on the tops. She'd scrubbed them raw in an attempt to get the blood out, he thought and ran his thumb over them. He wanted to tell her so many things, but his mind wouldn't send the words to his mouth.

Clara had untied one boot and was busy on the second when he realized she had moved to the floor.

He jerked his foot away from her hand. "Mmm. What are. You doing?"

With one movement she moved so she was standing on her knees. "Richard," she said softly, "you've spent the last however many days taking care of everyone. Cleaning up Jimmy's mess. Keeping us safe. And now you can barely sit up you are so tired. Let me take care of you."

Richard shook his head, his mouth twisting, not able to meet her gaze, but finally letting his hands rest on her shoulders. "Mmm. You don't have..."

"No. I don't have to. I want to. You didn't have to do any of the things you did, tonight, yesterday, last week, this month, since the day you met Jimmy, either. You did it because you care about us, because you love us. " Clara reached up with one hand to cup his face, to pull him down so that he had to look at her, while her other hand smoothed the silk of her kimono as she tried to steady her nerves.

"I didn't think I would get this. I thought I'd spend my life would be trapped with someone like Darcy Blaine. Darcy, someone like Darcy, would have never helped me keep Tommy safe. I thought I had lost you, lost this, forever over my father and Jimmy's stupid war. Until you stood in my father's house and held your hand out to me."

Clara was silent for a moment, and she looked down like she was studying his knee. She spoke without looking up. "That moment meant I'm yours until the moment you decide you no longer want me."

Richard couldn't look at her. He wanted to tell her that her letter felt like a deliverance, that he was the one who needed to beg forgiveness. Instead, he said, "I would. Hmm. Never."

"I know we have to talk about everything that happened, all that we did. But right now, this is one of the worst times of our lives and I need to be with you. And right now, I'm going to take care of you. It's not like you won't do the same for me. It's not like you haven't done the same for me."

Her hands moved to his tie and she smoothly untied it. "See?" Clara whispered, and he could hear the smile in her voice. "I got better with practice."

It felt like the nights in the Ford, or wrapped in blankets in the woods. Clara warm and near and unbuttoning his clothes felt more like something from a dream than reality. He lost himself in the feel of her fingers swiftly unbuttoning his vest and pushing it off his shoulders. Carefully she lowered one side of his suspenders and then the next. She repeated the same actions with his shirt. The entire time, as her head hovered near his own, as her hands brushed across body, he thought he shouldn't let her do this. He didn't...he didn't deserve Clara's gentle caretaking. He had removed her from the safety of Nucky's house out of a moment of blind need for her, and thrown her into the hell of Jimmy's downfall. Angela had been brutally murdered in the beach house. He wasn't sure that anywhere was safe. So far he had subjected her to Jimmy strung out on drugs, the murder of the Commodore, covering up Jimmy's crime, fighting with Gillian, and, worse of all, fleeing at midnight with only Tommy while he tried to help Jimmy. And Richard had a sick feeling that this was just the beginning.

But the soft gentleness of Clara, of anyone, undressing him, brushing his hair from his face, and taking care of him wasn't something he ever expected to have again. She wasn't doing it because he was broken or bad, but because she loved him and he was tired.

Her hands moved up to his face and removed his mask while he was still in his reverie.

"Oh my god," Clara exclaimed. "What happened?"

Richard's hand flew to his face and his back stiffened. He knew he shouldn't have let himself relax into Clara. His face had finally horrified her.

"There's a rash, or sores..." her hands were on either side of his face, trying to tilt it so she could see better in the moonlight, and her voice was horrified. "Do you need a doctor?"

"Sometimes, the heat..." he started to explain. He had worn the mask almost nonstop for two days, scorching summer days, while cleaning multiple crime scenes, while driving back and forth to Princeton, while never having the time to sleep or take the mask off.

Clara left the room, and the bathroom door closed behind her. Richard let his head hang down, his left hand still shielding the damaged side of his face from view. He had always feared that even for Clara the injury would be too much to deal with, and now it was proven to be so. She was hiding in the bathroom, he thought, unable to look at him but without anywhere to take Tommy. He'd sleep in the car, he thought, and then tomorrow he'd make sure she never had to see him again. His right hand twisted into the fabric of his pants.

The door opened and then she was back with linen and a jar in her hand. She sat everything on the bed next to him and leaned before him with one towel in her hand.

"Is it okay if I clean your face and put salve on it? It looks so painful."

When he didn't respond she tried again. "Richard?"

He couldn't answer. No one had touched the bad side of his face in years, not like that. Not even Clara, when they were wrapped around each other and her hands and mouth slid across every other part of his body. He nodded, finally. Clara leaned forward and softly pulled at his wrist until he moved his hand, and then she began gently dabbing the ruins of the left side of his face with the damp towel.

"Tell me if I hurt you, or if there's a better way," she whispered

He felt her start patting his face with a dry towel, and then heard her open a jar. He could feel the uncertainty in her touch, and it caused him to swallow, once more convinced that the reality of touching his face was proving to much for her. Instead, he felt her fingertips slowly work their way around the perimeter of where the mask sat on his face, carefully patting in the lotion, and working her way across his face. He groaned without meaning to, causing her to stop.

"Am I hurting you?"

He shook his head, unable to answer so she continued. The sound of the lid closing over the jar made him realize she was done. He grabbed her, suddenly, kicking off the boots she had already unlaced and pulling her down on the bed with him. They couldn't do anything, he knew, with Tommy asleep on the floor beside them. It didn't stop the need to wrap himself around her, to get as lost in the smell and feel of her as possible. Without thought, he put his hand under her top knee and wrapped her leg around his hip.

Clara sighed.

"I love you," he said in a gravelly whisper. "I still. Want. Flower boxes. And a hardware store. With a desk. For you to write. At."

Wrapping her hand around his head she whispered back "I love you, too. That's exactly what I want."

Richard's heartbeat and breathing slowed as they lay together, but Clara's didn't. She kept replaying everything, trying to find her mistakes, identifying the flaws in her plans. How, she castigated herself, how had she not truly seen Gillian and Jimmy's relationship? Why had she not acted sooner? Why hadn't she insisted Angela leave with her the day Angela told her she was scared? Angela would still be alive, Clara thought. Tommy would have a mother.

Every part of her body went stiff. It was her own fault her mother was dead, of course. It was her oldest sin. If she had come straight home from school, if she hadn't stopped to play in the park with Jimmy, if she had walked upstairs to check on her mother when she got him, her mother would still be alive. Still be alive, she reminded herself, if she had been enough for her mother. If she'd been a boy, if she'd been better, then her mother wouldn't have gone mad. If Clara had been enough, she thought, her mother would still be alive. Jimmy and her father would have stopped the war when she begged, they wouldn't be in this hell, they wouldn't be...

The feel of Richard's hand moving up to rub her shoulder startled her, but the warmth of his sleepy body next to her finally relaxed her slightly. She tried to match her breathing to his as she settled into his embrace, but even as she finally drifted off to sleep it was to a litany of all the mistakes she'd ever made.

* * *

Someone was looking at him. Richard's hand reached for Clara, assuming she was awake, but he realized he was on his back and in the bed alone.

Tommy stood next to the bed, his eyes moving between the mask Clara had set on the bedside table the night before and Richard's face.

"Your face is on the table," Tommy said quietly.

Richard's hand flew up to the damaged side of his face, the memory of the screaming Emily Schroeder coming back in a flash.

"You snore," Tommy continued.

The snoring was terrible, Richard knew, due to the destruction of his sinus cavities. He didn't know how Clara bore it.

"Why is your face on the table?" Tommy asked, still standing still.

Richard tried to find his voice. "The mask. Hmm. Is uncomfortable. To sleep. In."

"You take it off when you put on your jammies?" Tommy asked.

Not knowing how else to respond, Richard nodded. Where was Clara, he wondered.

Tommy looked back at his pallet. "Can I lay down with you?"

Richard moved over, and Tommy and the cow sat on the bed next to him.

"Daddy says you lost your face in the war," Tommy said, staring at Richard, who still had his hand over his face. "Did it hurt?"

Swallowing nervously, Richard tried to come up with a good answer.

"Does wearing your other face make it feel better?" Tommy asked, using his cow to gesture towards the mask.

"Mmm. It makes it. Easier."

"Your elbow is hitting me," Tommy complained as he squirmed around on the bed and kicked Richard's leg repeatedly.

"I'd. Have to move. Mmm. My hand," Richard said, completely unsure of what he should do.

"Okay."

Richard took a deep breath and slowly moved his hand from his face. He felt Tommy's eyes on him, looking with great interest at the mass of scar tissue that made up half his face. The seriousness of Tommy's expression made Richard think of Angela, and his heart ached for his friend.

"It looks melty," Tommy announced. "Can you tell me the mermaid story?"

"Mmm. I don't know..."

"Yes, you do. A long long time ago Atlantic City was a kingdom under the sea called Atlantaca..."

"Atlantis," Richard corrected.

"See! I knew you knew it!"

The door opened, and Richard sat up with a bolt. Clara stood in the door with a box of drinks and food in one hand and a shopping bag over her other arm.

"Richard's face is over there," Tommy announced. "Also, he says he doesn't know about mermaids, but he does, Clara."

Clara's eyes went to Richard, and then she smiled the bright smile she saved for Tommy. "Richard's mask is on the table because he doesn't sleep in it. His face is on his head, silly."

Tommy looked like he wanted to follow that statement up with more questions, so Clara quickly continued. "I brought breakfast! I went to Formica Brothers."

"You got lobster tails!" Tommy said excitedly but saw Clara raise an eyebrow. "You got sfogliatella."

"Close enough, here, come eat. Try not to make a mess." Clara put his drink and food on the desk and helped him into the chair before crossing to sit next to Richard, who had slipped his mask on.

"Are you okay?" she whispered, knowing what he was thinking about. "Tommy's not Emily. He's known you for over a year, and you are one of his favorite people. It's not the same."

After Tommy changed into the play clothes Clara had bought at Woolworth's, he took his new ball and went to play in the yard. Clara took her breakfast and coffee and sat on the porch, feeling that Richard could use time away from the chaos of the Darmody-Thompson clan to eat and get ready in peace.

She heard the Ford-Jimmy really did need to get that clutch fixed, she thought-before she saw it. 

"Daddy," Tommy said, and threw himself at Jimmy before he could get out of the car.

Jimmy wasn't wearing a shirt, just his suit jacket over a complicated bandage covering his chest. He looked so awful, Clara thought, his pupils still dilated and his eyes rimmed with red.

"Hey, Skeezix," Jimmy replied, ruffling the boy's hair.

"I ate a lobster tail, and slept on the floor, and Richard keeps his face on the table."

Jimmy looked up and smiled at Clara, who was trying not to laugh. "I'm glad you are having a good time. I need to talk to Clara, okay? Is that a new ball?"

Tommy went back in the yard to show off his new ball tricks, which to Jimmy looked like Tommy was throwing the ball straight up in the air, rarely catching it, and laughing hysterically when the ball fell back down to Earth.

Jimmy sat next to Clara silently, lit a cigarette, and passed it to her. They were on the second cigarette before either spoke.

"Outta all the things we have in common, both of us stabbing my father on the same night wasn't something I foresaw," Jimmy said quietly.

"Well, needs must," Clara responded. "Want to tell me what happened?"

"Not particularly. She was just sitting there, Clara, talking about Tommy wouldn't remember Angela and how she was his mother now and we would raise Tommy together. Like Angela never even existed, like..."

Clara grabbed Jimmy's hand and squeezed.

"That's when I had my hands around her throat. I just wanted her to stop. For once, I just wanted her to stop. And then the Commodore stabbed me, and I had my trench knife out. Ma, she was cheering me on, she wanted me..."

Of course she did, Clara thought. Angela was gone, and now she was getting rid of the Commodore. You and Tommy were going to be all hers.

"She'd already told Tommy Angela had gone to Paris and left him with Gillian, and that Gillian was his mother now. I'm just sorry you didn't finish her," Clara said, with a tone in her voice Jimmy had never heard before.

"I don't think..." Jimmy began, the need to defend his mother strong.

"Are you willing to bet Tommy's well-being on that, because I'm not. I'm serious, Jimmy, I'll kill her myself before I let her get near Tommy again. I'm sorry for everything that happened to her, but that doesn't mean I can't see she's a monster in her own right."

"That's why you did it? You set it up so Leander would think she murdered the Commodore to get Tommy away from her?"

Clara looked at him. "I did it for you, too. The look on her face, Jimmy, as she stood over you and the Commodore laying on the floor. Like a new queen reaching for the scepter. She was going to hold it over your head for the rest of your life. Plus, it was going to weaken Mr. Whitlock's support for you, and cost you what's left of the Yacht Club's backing."

Jimmy snickered. "These are the things you were thinking about as you stabbed the Commodore's dead body?"

"I did what I had to do. Just like you do. Just like Richard does. Just like my father does. I'm supposed to apologize because I'm a woman?"

"No, I'm just lucky you are a girl. God help me if you'd been a boy and sided with Nucky."

Clara took a long drag off the cigarette. "Glad that worked out for you. Look, I have a plan."

Richard opened the door.

"Just in time," Jimmy said. "Clara's about to tell us her plan."

Richard moved to Clara's other side.

"Look, Tommy needs to go home. So I'm going to call Margaret and ask her to send my things to the beach house."

"Your father. Will put the word. Out the beach house. Is off-limits," Richard said, realizing Clara's idea.

"That's right. If not out of love for me, then out of concern for his own reputation."

"Any other plays?" Jimmy asked.

"Yes. Richard, I'm assuming Mr. Whitlock paid off the coroner's man to write up the Commodore's as an accident?" Clara asked.

Richard nodded, uncertain where Clara was headed.

"Jimmy, you are going to thank him, and then you are going to tell him you are going to tell one man the truth. Well, part of the truth. Tell Mr. Whitlock you are going to tell Nucky that your father is dead and you killed him."

Jimmy stared at her, then smiled. "You want me to tell the actual truth to Nucky?"

Clara shook her head. "No. I want you to tell him the Commodore was recovering, that he wouldn't stop trying to bring Nucky down, that the Commodore was making the war worse. To save Nucky, to stop the war, you killed your father. I want you to offer up the Commodore's death to my father as a peace offering."

"The two of you, you are moving into the beach house?"

Clara and Richard looked at each other and nodded. All three of them sat on the porch and watched Tommy play, pushing away reality for a few quiet moments.


	27. Dearly Beloved-August 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two funerals and a...
> 
> SO MANY THANKS go to @runnoft who helped me beta the end of the chapter. Blame me for any awfulness, and her for any part that works.

Although he was no longer the Treasurer of Atlantic County, the hoi polloi recognized their ruler when he arrived at the church. Dressed in his darkest summer-weight suit, Nucky Thompson hadn't forgone wearing his trademark red carnation even on this most somber of occasions. Slowly Owen Sleater cut a path through the well-wishers and escorted Nucky and Margaret to Nucky's preferred pew. As people, most of them traitors who had thrown their lot in with Prince James, lined up to pay their respects, Nucky's eyes never stopped moving. Leander Whitlock sat with the remnants of the Yacht Club, suddenly looking very old. Well, Nucky thought, Leander was the only one who liked the old bastard, it makes sense he’s the only one who was truly mourning the Commodore.

A fucking joint funeral, Nucky reflected. The audacity. Gillian must have planned this, no way was James capable of it, and he couldn't imagine Clara wanting Angela's funeral sullied by the presence of the Commodore's remains. Although, hell, it wasn't like he actually knew his daughter. His eyes betrayed him by seeking sight of her among the crowd, but he didn't find her. Undoubtedly she and the freak were closeted with James and his son until closer to the start of the service. He did note Torrio's little troll Capone, and those puffed up children Arnold Rothstein doted on sitting in attendance.

When he told Torrio and Rothstein that their pups had grown fangs he hadn't realized his own daughter had been sharpening her teeth alongside them.

Clara. He'd like to get his hands on his wayward child. She'd called Margaret and asked if she could "beg a favor" and have her things sent to James's beach house. The house where Angela had been brutally murdered by some two-bit Yiddish gangster because James had no ability to attend to details and run his business like an adult. James, the traitor who had plotted his downfall, who had trapped him in a legal nightmare. That's where Clara was, with James, James’s bastard child, and some cretin who had crawled out of the backwoods of Wisconsin.

The idea of Clara taking the side of the man who betrayed him, who had sunk him into a legal nightmare made his blood boil. And it was now a legal nightmare that could end with him in the chair. Nucky forced his thoughts away from the murder and racketeering charges the bitch in the Post Office had hanging over his head and back to thoughts of Clara’s betrayal.

At a time when he needed preserve what little capital he had left with people like Waxey Gordon and Arnold Rothstein, he had had to call in favors to make sure James's (James Fucking Darmody, who had sent an assassin after him) beach house was known to be off-limits so that some half-assed gunman didn't shoot Clara while trying to kill James. Like poor Angela had been shot. His jaw tensed. Had Clara thought about what she was asking when she called Margaret and blithely asked for her things? Of course not. Clara had just left with that remnant of a man to run to James's side and look after the boy. Why Clara couldn't leave it to Gillian to look after her misbegotten brood was beyond Nucky.

The music started and the two coffins were born up the aisle by flocks of altar boys. Behind them was Gillian, wearing the most ridiculous mourning veil Nucky had ever seen in his life. Beside her, James stared straight ahead, but his eyes were bright red. The little boy clung to his father's hand and looked dazed, like he wasn't sure what was going on around him.

That's the way Clara had been, he remembered. Standing in a little gray dress, because he couldn't bear for her tiny self to be clothed in black, her hands smoothing the skirt over and over as she stared straight at her mother's coffin.

Nucky pushed the memory away. This child was much younger than Clara had been. Just four, if he recalled correctly. He probably wouldn't even remember this day. Behind James was Clara, this time dressed in black. In fact, she was dressed in the black dress and hat Nucky had insisted she buy last spring, after she’d shown up for a funeral wearing some pre-war relic. He had wasted no time sending her down to Belle Jolie for more appropriate mourning wear after that. Since she was a damn adult, he had no idea he should have told her to replace the dress this year. But there she stood, in a year old dress and hat she'd worn to countless other funerals and wakes. The girl had no sense.

Next to her was more proof of her lack of good damn sense. The freak stood next to her, although for once he wasn't wearing some terrible suit made of tweed from the Sears and Roebuck catalog that only a hayseed would dare wear. This suit was made of some sort of mid-weight worsted wool, Nucky decided. An improvement, even though it still looked like something a low-level clerk might purchase for his best suit. In one hand he held a proper hat instead of one of those silly caps he usually wore.

And in his other hand was Clara's. Nucky forced his face to remain still. He heard the murmurs go through the church, though, and saw Capone's smirk. Clara was upset-he couldn't fail to notice her red-rimmed eyes and pursed lips, like she was struggling to maintain her composure as they walked. Well, she had lost one of her little strays, hadn't she? 

Harrow looked like he always did. Well, perhaps in part that was because Nucky was staring at the masked side of his face. But was there any difference, really, Nucky pondered.

When they neared the second pew, Harrow put his hand on the small of Clara's back. Nucky hissed but didn't realize until he noticed Margaret was staring at him. James turned and motioned for them to sit in the first pew. Once more Harrow had his goddamn hands all over Clara's arms and back. Like Clara wasn't capable of sitting in a pew without his guidance. Like Clara wasn't capable of entertaining King George and Queen Mary, while the mere thought of having to talk to the milkman made Harrow scramble for a corner where he could hang his head and mangle his cap in his hands.

Gillian openly glared at Clara and Harrow as they sat in the family pew. How dare Gillian glare at his daughter? Wasn't Clara currently wrecking her life in an attempt to help James and Tommy? Gillian grabbed the little boy by the arm and led James and Tommy up to the dais where they stood between the coffins. Gillian looked like she was ready for her fucking coronation, like a warrior queen standing over the bodies of her vanquished enemies. She turned and said something to James, before leaning down and placing Tommy's hand on one of the caskets. Gillian was clearly whispering something in the boy's ear.

"Ma, enough," James said loudly enough for his voice to carry.

Nucky shook his head. James couldn't even behave properly at his wife’s and father's funerals.

Tommy started crying. Nucky saw Clara's shoulders tense, while Harrow looked back and forth between Clara and the scene on the altar.

Gillian suddenly grabbed hold of James, who pushed his mother away and stormed off towards the Deacon door. Gillian followed right behind him.

Tommy was alone on the dais, his hand on his mother's coffin as he wailed.

Clara and Harrow were both on their feet in an instant, racing to get to the boy. Clara knelt, trying to talk to the boy as he screamed for his mother. It looked like Harrow was perfectly calm while Clara struggled to retain her composure as Harrow knelt to whisper in Clara's ear-and considering that Nucky had never heard the man mumble any louder than a low growl Harrow getting close to Clara's ear to speak seemed excessive, how much quieter could his whisper be?-but when Harrow turned the calmness of the mask was in sharp contrast to what even Nucky could see was anguish on the intact side of his face.

Next to Nucky Margaret reached for her handkerchief, and he realized most people around him were either openly weeping or trying to keep from doing so. Father Brannen stood uselessly next to the Commodore's coffin as the boy wept and Clara and Harrow tried to calm him. Finally, Nucky saw the boy wrapping his arms around Harrow's neck as Harrow lifted him from the floor.

If the kid was wailing now, Nucky thought, imagine when he realized a half-faced remnant was carrying him. But Tommy buried his face in Harrow's neck like it was the most natural thing in the world. Nucky felt the heat rising through him as he watched them sit back down in the pew, so close to each other that the Darmody boy was basically sitting in both of their laps. Harrow pulled out his handkerchief, and mopped the child's face while Clara smoothed the child's hair and bit both of her lips. Then Harrow reached over and touched Clara's cheek. Clara tried to smile at him, but it was obvious she was fighting to hold back tears. Harrow moved his arm hesitantly, and for a moment it looked like the man was going to run, but then he settled around Clara who moved ever so slightly even closer to him.

Like he was a normal man. Watching Harrow act as if he had a right to touch Clara, to dare to offer her comfort when she was sad infuriated Nucky further. And in front of all of Atlantic City Harrow put his arm around Clara. Around his daughter. And now, Nucky thought, his own fucking out of control daughter was leaned all over him.

"Dearly beloved..." Father Brannen intoned from the dais. Nucky barely heard any of the service, his attention totally taken by the three people sitting alone in the front pew. Finally the funeral mass concluded. The congregation was still as the two caskets started down the aisle. It looked like Clara was trying to convince the boy to walk with them, but finally Harrow picked him up and the boy hid his face again. When the masked remnant turned he faltered as he realized the entire church was gaping at him, Clara twisted her arm into his and nodded at him. She was reassuring him, Nucky realized and became even angrier at the idea of Clara comforting Harrow. And now, the funeral over, the people gathered didn't hold back. People were talking, people were laughing at Clara because of her ridiculous choices. And people laughing at his daughter meant they were laughing at him, that his own reputation was taking even more damage.

Damn Clara to hell for this act of selfish stupidity.

* * *

Margaret steeled herself before she allowed Owen to help her into the car. Normally she made sure Enoch helped her into the car when he was with her, but Enoch was so furious he had simply walked to his side of the vehicle, got in, and slammed the door. Owen's hand brushed her back and he squeezed her hand as he helped her up. Margaret swallowed hard. Luxuriating in Owen's touch was a sin she could not allow, not now. It didn't stop her breath from coming in faster as his hand clasped hers.

Enoch's fury came off him in waves when she joined him in the back seat.

"Could you believe the way they acted during a funeral?"

Margaret sighed. They acted like a couple mourning their friend and trying their best to help a young child who had just lost his mother. Poor little lamb, the boy was just a little younger than Emily. Fear gripped at her at the thought of her children being left in the world without her. Who would care for them, who would raise them? Especially now with Emily handicapped. Out of the corner of her she considered Nucky. He'd keep them from starving, she thought. If he survives the legal quagmire he's in, that is.

Enoch needed to survive the upcoming trial. Obsessing over Clara's love life wasn't going to help him. She sighed and plunged in. "Didn't you say Clara was with Richard because of her knight in shining armor desire? Because she didn't want a normal relationship?"

Owen's shoulders tightened visibly, and Margaret knew he was fighting back laughter at the reminder of Enoch's ridiculous theory.

Enoch didn't answer. It was a long drive off the island to the Atlantic City Cemetery in Pleasantville. When they finally arrived Enoch was out of the car in a flash. Margaret watched Harrow park the Ford, get out, and talk to Clara who was in the backseat with that poor little boy.

"Mrs. Schroeder," Richard said when Margaret approached.

"Mr. Harrow, Clara," Margaret replied. The little boy was asleep in the back seat as Clara sat next to him and rubbed his back. "How are you?"

"Tommy cried himself to sleep while we drove," Clara answered.

"Poor little thing. Do you wish to go to the graveside?" Margaret asked gently.

"I don't want to leave Tommy."

"I'll stay with him."

Clara hesitated and looked at Richard. Margaret felt the girl's anxiety. "Clara, I promise I won't let anything happen to him. If he wakes up I'll get you."

* * *

Leander Whitlock sat down gratefully on the wooden folding chair and pulled out his handkerchief to mop his face. Louis's funeral had turned into a debacle, thanks to Gillian and James's lack of decorum. James. They had fostered such hopes for that young man, but those hopes were quickly turning to ashes. The strike still raged across the Boardwalk. Everyone was losing money. And now James was falling apart.

Nucky Thompson stood over Louis's grave in triumph. Leander wanted nothing more than to push the man into the open grave. The red carnation. Had anyone ever told the former Treasurer that it made him look like a floorwalker at a department store? Nucky grimaced, and Leander looked over to see Thompson's latest mistress standing at the car with James's man Harrow and Clara Thompson. Clara finally took Harrow's hand and walked away, leaving Tommy with the woman.

Leander found Harrow disconcerting-who knew where to look, the fake eye or the real one?-but the man was loyal and efficient. And Clara Thompson, whatever Nucky's issues, was well-raised. She was equally loyal, and obviously loved Tommy. Tommy's mother was about to be committed to the ground. Gillian had been a disastrous mother to James, who was spinning out of control. Someone had to raise the boy. Besides, Clara wasn’t just a Thompson. She was a Jeffries, and was an heiress in her own right. Jeffries had left his not inconsiderable fortune to his beloved daughter's child. Leander could trust that she would bring up the boy correctly. 

After all, he thought, who better to protect Louis's heir than Atlantic City’s very own princess and the assassin who loved her?

The burials were far less dramatic than the funeral, but Leander observed every moment. Clara and Harrow both watched the vehicle where Thompson's woman sat with the boy. When it came time to drop handfuls of dirt on Angela Darmody's coffin, for one moment Leander thought Clara might break down. When it was all over, he watched the girl take a deep breath, let go of Harrow's hand and walk toward her father.

The look on Nucky Thompson's face wasn't reassuring.

"Mr. Harrow," Leander called out. He watched the man look around uncertainly, as if he wasn't sure who could be calling him. "Come here, please."

Richard walked over to where Leander sat watching the gravediggers filling in the Commodore's grave.

"And how is little Master Darmody doing?" Leander asked.

"His mother died. Mmm. So he's not. Doing well."

Leander nodded. "I'm sure he's doing better back in his own home with Clara watching after him. Clara reminds me of her mother. Her grandfather, Mr. Jeffries, was one of the wealthiest men in Atlantic City. Mabel was his princess, just like Clara is Nucky's. Mabel was independent and headstrong, just like her daughter. But nothing was going to stop Mabel from marrying Nucky Thompson.

"Mabel was a modern girl, and Clara is an even more modern woman. However, the law hasn't quite caught up to society. The law doesn't see women, well, in the same way it sees men. Clara can't get a bank account or a loan without a man signing off on it. Her legal identity isn't as firm and absolute as, say, yours is. Until she marries she's very much under Nucky's control in some ways. Until she marries."

Leander had no idea what Harrow was thinking, but he wanted to drive the point home.

Someone had to raise Tommy Darmody. He was no longer laying bets that James would survive the month. 

"If you care about Clara Thompson, you need to marry her. Tomorrow isn't too soon."

* * *

"Father," Clara said as she approached Nucky.

"Are you not done making a spectacle of yourself?" Nucky hissed at her.

Clara blinked rapidly, her left hand smoothing her black dress. "I wasn't aware I was making a spectacle."

"Showing up in a dress you've had for the last year, clinging to that thing, grabbing Tommy Darmody, what do you call it?"

Trying to make it through this week, Clara thought.

"Doing the best I can at my friend's funeral and trying to help her child. I'm sorry I didn't think to go shopping. I'm not sorry about Richard."

"You aren't sorry that you've taken up with some backwoods thing that's not..."

"Stop. I love him," Clara couldn’t hide her anger. "He loves me. I've never..."

"You've never what? Acted like a whore in public..."

"I'm acting like a whore? Because Richard's my choice, because I'm not selling my body to win you political favors? You certainly don't choose your bedmates by what advantages they bring you, at least outside of the bedsheets. Which I know because Lucy was so loud I heard her throughout the suite! And we haven’t even time to discuss her lack of social skills or breeding. What backwoods did she crawl out of? And Margaret, not being able to keep your hands off of Margaret might land you in the electric chair!"

Father and daughter stared at each other bitterly.

"I'd watch my words, Clara. You don't seem to understand that I'm going to let you go so far and then no further."

Clara closed her eyes, trying to refocus on her goal. Remembering the importance of fixing what went wrong with her father and Jimmy. She had to fix it, she reminded herself. "Let's not fight. I just buried one of my closest friends. We just buried Jimmy's father. And the Commodore. Father, we need to talk about the Commodore, about what happened."

"What do you mean?"

"Jimmy killed the Commodore, Father. He did it for you."

"James killed his father for me?" Nucky asked suspiciously. 

Clara nodded. "Yes. The Commodore was recovering, and he was out of control. It was always the Commodore's idea to destroy you, it was always his plan. Jimmy made mistakes, but it was always the Commodore who was driving the attacks on you. And once he got better, it got worse. Killing him was the only way to save you, so that's what Jimmy did."

“And what did Eli think about all of this?” Nucky asked.

“Uncle Eli knows that the Commodore is a danger,” Clara answered warily, sensing her father was laying a trap.

Nucky nodded. “Eli knows all about danger. The lady lawyer arrested him the morning Angela was murdered.”

“For what?” Clara asked, and then the realization hit her. “For murdering Margaret’s husband?”

Father and daughter stared at each other, each having the same thought. The trap was closing.

* * *

Clara collapsed into the beach chair, her legs hanging off one arm of the chair. She was so tired her bones ached. Her facial muscles twinged both from crying and from holding back tears. The day felt never-ending. After the funeral they had driven back to the house, hoping Jimmy would be waiting. There was no sign of him at the house. Tommy had woken up on the car ride back, so they all changed their clothes and went to the Boardwalk.

It was almost like a happy afternoon, Clara reflected. Or at least, they tried their best to make it so and Tommy was young enough that distractions worked well. They'd spent the afternoon on the Steel Pier, riding the carousel, playing games...Clara smiled when she thought about Richard winning Tommy prize after prize at the shooting gallery. Tommy had so much bounty that they had divided it between them when Tommy wanted to walk holding both of their hands. They swung him between them until Clara's shoulder felt like it was going to come out of its socket. She and Tommy had eaten chop suey and Richard had brought his back and eaten while she gave Tommy his bath. Richard had then told her he needed to get something from his place.

He's looking for Jimmy, she decided. Jimmy was probably with Capone, and while Capone wasn't her favorite person, she was glad Jimmy had someone to get drunk with. Because she knew she needed Richard tonight. She was exhausted and her nerves were fraying. She wanted him back here, with her, and she didn’t feel bad about it. Angela was dead. Both her father and Uncle Eli were facing capital charges. Clara absently twisted a lock of hair as the terror of either of them going to the electric chair hit her. She tried to push the fear away by focusing on things she could do. Going to check on Aunt June and the kids was first on her list, she decided. Tommy would fit in well with the younger Thompsons, and god knows he needed to spend time around other children.

The sound of the Ford pulling into the driveway let her know he was back. She didn't move, letting him find her. They'd been very good, Clara thought. Between the two of them they'd watched over Jimmy and watched over Tommy. At night they'd shared the guest room, but never let anything go beyond kissing and being happy to be in the same bed. And she was grateful for every night she’d fallen asleep next to him and every morning she’d woken up with his arm draped across her. She’d had more of the mornings than of the nights, since Jimmy had often wanted Richard to sit up with him. She’d quietly put Tommy to bed and started working on her new Ruth Fielding novel on those nights. She’d been very good, in her opinion. She was tired of being good.

From the moment the door out to the beach opened she could feel the anxiety came off him in waves. She started to swing her legs off the arm of the chair, but he put his hand on her knee to stop her. His other hand never left his pocket. At first she thought he was going to speak, but he just swallowed several times without saying anything.

Clara's mind began to race with the possibilities of what was making him anxious. "Richard, are you okay? Did you find Jimmy? Is something wrong?"

Instead of answering he pulled his hand out of his pocket and dropped a small box in Clara's lap. For a moment she thought it was one of the prizes he had won Tommy that afternoon. Then she realized it was a velvet box tied with silver ribbon.

Her mind refused to accept what it already knew.

"My birthday isn't for thirteen days," Clara said. That's what it must be, she thought. He's giving me my birthday present early to cheer me up. Her hand moved to the ribbon and she untied it with one swift tug and hesitated only a moment before she opened the box.

A sapphire. A dark sapphire in an oval gold setting with small diamonds on either side. A ring.

"Why are you giving me a ring?" Clara asked, her voice thick with emotion as she ran her fingertip over the cool surface of the stone. She looked up, but Richard wouldn't look back at her.

"It's a ring. I can only think of one reason why you'd give me a ring," Clara looked at him, waiting for a reply. "Richard, you can't just hand me a ring and not say anything. Because I think you are proposing and that's our life-it’s your life, it’s my life, it’s our life-and you have to say something."

Richard nodded and looked down at his shoes. "I understand. Mmm. If you don't. Want to."

Clara stood and reached for his hand. "Don't be ridiculous. Richard, I..."

I'm going to be one of those women who cry when she's proposed to, Clara thought. I cried regarding Darcy's proposal, but that's because my father blackmailed me into accepting. But this is...

"I love. You. I don't want. Anything to happen. To you. Mr. Whitlock said," Richard began.

Clara's head snapped up. "Leander Whitlock? What does he have to do with this?"

Richard’s throat clicked several times before he spoke. "He said. It was best. Because. Because your father. Could make. You leave. Because you're. A woman."

Because I'm a woman, Clara thought. Not a real person, not really.

"I don't. Want. Anything to happen. To you."

' _Richard is so honorable,'_ Angela's voice whispered in Clara's memory. She turned to look into the windows of the sunroom, half expecting to see Angela sitting with her on the floor, drinking whiskey sours. Angela reassuring her that if she got pregnant Richard would marry her. I still don't want him to marry me because he's honorable, Clara answered Angela in her mind. I want him to marry me because he wants me.

“How did you get a ring? You were barely gone any time."

Richard looked up then. "I bought. It in. June. At Blatt's. Do you. Not like it?"

"You were going to ask me in June?" Clara asked. In June, she thought. When we were happy and we were together and dreaming of what our life might look like. 

"I know. This isn't. A nice proposal. Like Blaine..."

Clara smiled. "My father asked me to marry Darcy. Actually, he coerced me to accept Darcy. And my father bought that ring, a ring I hated. That represented a man I couldn't stand and a life I didn't want.

“I love this ring, I...But you have to ask properly, you know."

"It will never. Be the life. You could have with. Someone better,” Richard began without looking up, the right side of his mouth twitching badly between each word. “Someone you could. Eat dinner with. Someone..."

"Okay, so you should never try to work as a salesman,” Clara said, and stepped closer to him. “I'm still saying yes. When do you want to...?”

Richard swallowed hard. "Tomorrow."

"You want to get married tomorrow?" Because of my father, because Richard's trying to keep me safe, she realized and wanted to scream. Not even this, she thought, was safe from being tainted by the horror of this war. 

But he had bought the ring in June.

Clara's heart sped up. Tomorrow, they'd be married.

"Maryland, Mr. Whitlock. Said."

"Well, then, I'd like to wear my ring now," Clara said softly and handed him back the box.

The ring looked small in his hand, and there was mild fumbling before the ring made it to her finger. Clara stretched her hand out, admiring how the ring caught the moonlight. 

She wasn’t sure how they ended up sitting in the sand, leaning against each other, and listening to the sea. There was so much they still needed to talk about, to work through, she thought. But this was the only night they were going to be engaged, and this was how she was going to spend it.

* * *

The first thing they did was try to find Jimmy. Richard looked everywhere he could think of, but Jimmy’s Ford wasn’t anywhere-not the Commodore’s, not the warehouse, not parked near the Boardwalk.

“We will take. Mmm. Tommy with us,” Richard said as he took the frying pan Clara was attempting to scrub out of her hand and finished washing it. Tommy was still eating the scrambled eggs and toast she’d made while Richard had looked for Jimmy. “We’ll leave. Jimmy. A note. We’ll be back. Mmm. In the morning.”

Part of him still didn’t believe it was true, that something would go wrong and keep them from Maryland. No part of him believed that Clara would go through with marrying him. She’d realize what she was doing, she’d change her mind.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said rapidly. “I love you, but you don’t have to marry me just because you want to save me from whatever Mr. Whitlock is afraid my father is going to do to make me pay for choosing Jimmy.”

Clara was nervous, he thought. “Mmm. Is that what. We are doing. Today? I thought. We were taking Tommy. To Maryland for. The scenery.”

For a moment she just stared at him, but then she smiled. “The scenery, and you know, I’m rather sick of being Clara Thompson. Seems like a good day to change that.” 

He reached forward to touch her cheek and Clara leaned into his hand.

“No kissing in the kitchen!” Tommy demanded from the table. 

Richard and Clara stepped apart. Clara ran her hand through her hair.

“Your present! You're wearing it!” Tommy said delightedly. “I never told!”

Clara looked between Tommy and Richard.

“I didn’t tell, even when I really wanted to! I helped pick it out!”

“Mmm. Tommy went with. Me to Blatt’s,” Richard said.

“I love it,” Clara said, her voice not quite even. “It’s what I always wanted.”

They were packed and on the train to Elkton before lunch. When they arrived, it reminded Richard of a land-locked Boardwalk. Men hawking various wedding services lined the train platform and out into the street like carnival barkers trying to convince them to spend a nickel on their sideshow.

His plan had been to get to Elkton and get married. For once he hadn’t thought of every step and was now at a loss. 

“Well, I know there’s not a waiting period but we do have to get married in a church according to Maryland law,” Clara said as they stood in the lobby of the train station and tried to decide what was first.

A church, he thought. Was there a Catholic church in this town? Would the Catholic church marry them so quickly? Did it matter that he wasn't Catholic? Did he need to confess his sins, he had so many and he shouldn't tell...

"It doesn't matter to me which one, do you have a preference?" she continued. "After all, you are a better Lutheran than I am a Catholic."

"I'm hungry," Tommy whined next to them.

"He eats all the time," Clara whispered in Richard's ear before turning to Tommy. "Okay, kiddo, we'll get something in a minute, although you ate lunch on the train."

"That was before my nap," Tommy said, rubbing his eyes. "I'm hungry after my nap."

Unfortunately, Tommy had been sound asleep when the train pulled into Elkton. Waking him up had proven difficult and he had not been in a pleasant mood since they woke him.

"Mmm. We could. Try to find a Catholic Church."

Clara looked up at him and then looked away. "We'd have to promise to raise our children as Catholics. And that seems unfair. Especially since, if we're honest, we both know which one of us will probably end up taking them to church."

Richard looked down at Tommy so he didn't have to look at her at the thought of children to take to church. "We should get a. License."

Clara nodded, so he bought Tommy a bag of roasted peanuts from a vendor and they headed to the courthouse. Other couples stood awkwardly in line with them at the Courthouse, although no other couple tried to corral a four-year-old as they waited. Tommy’s mood had not improved. They filled out the application, and Richard carefully tucked the license in his pocket when they set out to find a hotel and someone to marry them.

Pastors and those they hired to bring in customers made that easy. The first person who approached them was from the Little Chapel, so they made an appointment for that evening. Who knew, Richard thought as they continued down the list that Clara seemed to magically have in her head, that getting married would entail so many errands? The only thing there were more of than chapels were jewelry stores. They stopped in one to buy their rings. 

Buying jewelry with Clara was an entirely different experience than buying it with Tommy. Clara brushed aside two trays of rings with barely a look and negotiated with the jeweler until he brought out a tray of plain rings in the same dark gold as her engagement ring and then she proceeded to barter about the price until Richard wanted to give the man any amount of money to make it stop. 

“Do you want a wide or narrow band?” Clara turned to him with a smile at the same time as she grabbed Tommy’s hand and whispered what sounded like a threat about what would happen if he even thought about touching anything in the store.

Beyond words, Richard pointed to the one he wanted and submitted to having the jeweler measure his finger. Clara chose a thin band and reached in her handbag for her wallet.

“Mmm. You can’t,” he started to try and stop her .

“You aren’t paying for your own ring. I get to buy that,” Clara insisted, and the jeweler took the money from her. Richard stopped arguing and took out the money to buy Clara’s. 

“What will we do about rooms?” Clara asked when they walked into the New Central Hotel. 

Richard stared at her.

“Tommy will need somewhere to sleep tonight,” she said, refusing to look away, even as she saw he understood her implication.. “But we can’t exactly put him in a room alone, either.”

Luckily the hotel had a parlor suite available, and as Clara watched Richard pay she added money to the neverending list of things they needed to talk about at some point. She had no idea how much he had or how much he made with Jimmy. She’d been able to save most of her pay from her writing jobs, and she planned on trying to work more now. She certainly planned on paying her share of their expenses, but she knew that was going to be a negotiation. 

Clara emerged from the bath and used the bedroom to dress in. A far cry from Angela’s wedding day, she thought, as she remembered the hours they had spent getting ready. The laughing. The talking. Clara allowed herself a moment of self-pity that after she had helped so many of her friends get ready on their wedding days, there was no one for her to share her happiness and her excitement with. Angela had told her that one day they’d be pinning flowers in her hair when she married Richard, and here she was, but without Angela to smile at her in the mirror.

The bed was reflected in the mirror, and Clara stared at it. Tonight, she and Richard would be in that bed. In a few hours, no one would ever be able to stop them from sharing a bed again. Her pulse hummed a little stronger. If she’d married Darcy, Angela, Rose, Romola, even Dorothy they would have all been there, trying to make her laugh, trying to ease her nerves. They would have helped her out of her wedding dress and into some expensive nightgown after the reception was over. And then they would have left her, and she would have been expected to hand the entirety of her being over to Darcy. Clara shuddered at the thought. This wasn’t perfect, but it was right, she decided. Tomorrow morning she was going to wake up and be with Richard out of her own free choosing, and that seemed a little bit like a miracle.

The doorknob rattled, startling her.

“Clara?” Tommy called as he walked in.

“There’s these things called knocking and waiting for someone to answer we might need to address, kiddo,” Clara said, relieved all she had left to do was put on her jewelry, hat, and gloves.

“I thinking,” Tommy began.

“I am thinking,” Clara corrected.

“Is this where my mommy is?”

Clara gasped and lifted Tommy into her lap, forgetting about the delicate silk and embroidery of her dress. “Baby, no. Remember Daddy told you that Mommy went to live in heaven.”

“That’s not here?” Tommy asked quietly.

“No, this is just Maryland.”

“But I want her to live with me in our house, not in heaven,” Tommy said, wiping his eyes with fists.

“I know, baby. Me too. I miss her, and I know you miss her.” Clara wiped her own tears from her eyes. “But just because we can’t see her doesn’t mean she’s not with us. You know my mommy died when I was a little girl?”

Tommy thought for a moment, and then nodded. “That’s why you live in a hotel with your Daddy.”

Not any more, Clara realized. “That’s right. And I still miss her. I don’t miss her like I did when she first went to heaven, but I still miss her. I miss her a lot today, actually.”

“Why?”

I have put none of this into words, not even to myself, Clara thought but she went on. “Because I’m getting married, and I want to tell her all about it. I want to tell her about Richard, about you, about my books, about Jimmy. I want to tell her how much I miss your mommy. And that’s how you’ll feel, sometimes. You won’t always miss your mommy like you miss her today, but some days things will happen and you’ll really, really want to tell her about it.”

Tommy lay his head against her chest. 

“But she loved you so much, Tommy. That doesn’t go away. So she’ll always be with you, and you’ll find ways to keep her with you.”

“How?”

Clara reached over to the velvet pouch on the dressing table. “When women get married, they are supposed to wear something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. My new is the ring you helped Richard pick out…”

“And it’s blue!”

“Clever boy, it is blue. My old are these pearls,” Clara said, pulling them and a bracelet from the pouch. “They were my mother’s. Her father gave them to her the day she married my father. So wearing them makes me feel like she’s with me today. And the bracelet is something borrowed.”

“It’s Mommy’s!”

“That’s right, because I also wanted to feel like your mommy was with me, at least a little bit.”

Tommy readjusted in her lap. “I still want Mommy.”

“I still want my mommy, too. You know what though, the other way you get to keep part of her? Is by being with people who loved her. So anytime Daddy, or Richard, or I hug you or tell you about her you get part of her back for a little bit. My Uncle Eli, he would always tell me stories about my mother, about how much she loved me and…”

Clara took a gaspy breath to try and keep from sobbing. She felt Tommy’s chubby little hand pat her face. 

Richard walked through the open door and stopped when he saw Tommy in Clara’s lap, both with tearstained faces.

“We miss our mommys,” Tommy said, and then frowned. “Where is your mommy?”

“She died,” Richard answered. 

“When you were a little kid?”

“Mmm. No. While I was. In the war.”

“You miss your mommy?” Tommy asked.

Richard swallowed hard and nodded. 

“When we hug each other she’s here. Just like my mommy and Clara’s.” Tommy jumped down from Clara’s lap. “Can I have ice cream for supper?”

Clara stood up, and ineffectually dabbed at the damp spot on her shoulder. “No. Tonight we eat cake.

* * *

It was not a storybook wedding, Clara thought as they went back to the room to see about settling Tommy for the night. The Little Chapel was rather like a factory for weddings. They’d stood in line with one couple who were so horrifyingly young Clara wanted to ask them if their parents knew where they were, and another couple old enough to be their parents. Suddenly they were in the chapel with the pastor, the official witness, and Tommy. . 

Did she know his middle name was Henry, she wondered as the pastor efficiently moved them through the service and Tommy tried twice to hand them the rings before they had gotten to that part. Clara knew she shouldn’t judge, since she had randomly said I do well before she was supposed to and the pastor made a joke that she was quite the willing bride.

And then suddenly the man said ‘Mr. and Mrs. Harrow’ and Clara thought, oh how odd. The witness doubled as a photographer. Tommy, of course, stood in the picture with them, and the photographer was sensitive enough to take it while they still stood facing each other.

They ordered room service when they got back to the hotel. Richard ate at the vanity in the bedroom while Clara and Tommy ate in the living room. Clara knew she should give Tommy a bath, but really, there was only so much one could handle in a day.

Every time the light hit Richard’s ring she found herself staring at it. He was her husband, she thought, trying the idea out in her mind. Well, technically the marriage wasn’t irrevocable until they went to bed, and so she doubled down on the idea of skipping bath time and just stuffing Tommy into his pajamas after he finished his cake.

Tommy, instead of settling down the way Clara desperately wanted him to, started running around the suite. 

“I’m rather out of ideas,” Clara admitted sitting back on the sofa. 

“Mmm. Do you have. A book?”

Clara nodded, pulled out _A Princess of Mars_ and started reading out loud, curling up against Richard’s side, purposefully ignoring Tommy. When the first Martian showed up Richard took the book and read the lines in his voice, and Tommy could no longer resist. He bounded up into their laps and sprawled out until he finally fell asleep across both of them.

“I do have one question,” Clara whispered in Richard’s ear.

Richard’s hands twisted, fearful that this was the moment Clara told him she felt she made a mistake.

“How is it possible that he’s already so sticky when I made him scrub his hands before we put his pajamas on? It’s like the stickiness comes from within!”

They carefully worked their way out from underneath Tommy, and Clara tucked him in while Richard checked the front door. 

As they walked toward the bedroom door Clara felt shy. Don't be a goose, she chastised herself. It was hardly the first time they'd walked into a room together and shut the door with the intention of going to bed. But it was different, a voice in her head insisted. This was different. Suddenly she felt Richard's hand on the back of her knee and he was lifting her off the ground.

"What are you doing?" Clara whispered, afraid of waking Tommy up.

"Carrying you," Richard answered as they stepped through the door.

Clara shot one last look at the sleeping boy on the sofa before she caught the door with her hand as they went through. "Wait," she said, trying to lean down enough to twist the lock.

"Hmm," Richard said, seeing what she was doing. He readjusted her so he could reach under her and lock the door. Turning around he tossed Clara onto the bed with enough force that she bounced.

Clara laughed and looked up at him. Alone finally, she thought. A feeling of pure exhilaration flooded her. They were married. All the other emotions she'd tried to bury were storming within her. Her breath caught when she felt him looking at her, and she sat up on her knees as she reached her hands out and rested them on his forearms.

Everything was still for a moment before she felt the drag of his stubble across her cheek, and then his mustache brushing along the corner of her mouth before half her mouth felt his lips pressing warm and seeking against hers, while the half was rubbing against the cool tin of the mask. Clara felt one of his hands on the back of her neck while the other drifted below her waist and pushed her into him. The edges of his mask cut into her mouth and nose, and the corner of his glasses caught her temple. At the moment she didn't care, her hands pulling to free his shirt from his waistband so she could run her hands up his back.

"Missed you," Richard whispered.

"I missed you," Clara responded breathlessly. "Never again, okay?"

He pulled away and turned toward the nightstand, taking off the mask as he went. Clara started to follow but forced herself to stay back, instead working on undoing the hook and eye closures that ran down the side seams of her dress. The sound of his dogtags hitting the wood of the table made her look up. 

It was the way he was looking at her that made her reach toward him. The long nights of missing him, of laying in a strange bed in Margaret’s house thinking she’d never see him again crashed back over her and it seemed like the way to push back those feelings was to have him now. Their mouths met again and this time it felt like they were never going to let go. Clara’s hands pulled at Richard’s shirt while Richard’s grabbed handfuls of her dress and slip. They pulled apart just long enough for her to pull his shirt and undershirt over his head and for Richard to pull her dress and slip off in one go.

His fingers slid along her cheek and back to her hair. He slowed down and kissed her gently. All she could think was that his mouth felt so good against hers, just as she remembered. She could taste their wedding cake in his kiss. They fell back against the bed without letting their mouths separate. He kissed her again and again, slow and soft, as his other hand skimmed her waist, sliding up to the bottom of her bra, making her whimper .

She could take it no more, her hand working between them and cupping him through his trousers before she started work on the buttons. Now he was panting heavily into her mouth but neither moved away for a moment, until he pushed her back on the bed and hooked his thumbs under the waistband of her tap pants and started pulling them down. Clara leaned up enough to let him free her while she reached back to unfasten her bra. The bed squeaked underneath them, and Clara looked up worriedly. Richard pulled them both off the bed, and then yanked the blankets and pillows down the floor. Clara finished unbuttoning his trousers and pushed them down with his boxers in one go.

Panting they sank down onto the blanket. His fingers trailed feather-light down her hips, thighs and then back up to her breasts. It occurred to her, even in the haze of lust, that he was tracing her freckles. The random touches changed to a circling motion as he moved towards the tips of her breasts. His touch grew firmer, much to her relief. It was more pleasurable but less teasing, she thought.

He was terrified of making a mistake, that she wouldn’t like what they were doing. The little noises she made as his hands traced around her restored his confidence. He cupped her breasts in his hands, feeling their weight and running his thumb across her scar until finally he rolled her nipples between his fingers. Clara cried out and grabbed his shoulders. He lowered his head, capturing the sensitized flesh of one between his teeth on the good side of his mouth. When he finally, finally slid a hand between her legs he moaned at the wetness he found there. As his finger disappeared inside her she buried her face against his chest to mask the sounds she was making. 

“Please,” she whispered in his ear and sank back onto the blanket.

The soft silvery light coming through the window was the only light in the room, and caused the dampness on the inside of her thighs to shine in the darkness as she lay sprawled before him. Her breaths were deep and fast and she bit her bottom lip as she looked up at him hungrily.

He took a deep breath, still not quite believing it was his wife who waited for him.

“Please,” Clara said again and her hand went lower.

She closed her hand around him and he groaned in relief. Slowly her hand moved up and down a few times, and then she was pressing him against her entrance. 

Steading himself, he pushed into her slowly, her body offering little resistance. He watched her face to make sure she was ready. When her eyes opened and she started moving beneath him he braced his forearms on either side of her head and buried his face in the side of her neck, breathing in her salty orange smell as he began moving within her.

Clara was moaning in his ear and her legs wrapped around him as she tried to draw him further in. He could feel the tension in her thighs and stomach. He raised his head and watched her.

It felt like she was spinning on the edge of a cliff, she thought and opened her eyes when she felt his head move. He was looking right at her, which made her want to close her eyes and hide. Having him watch her writhe underneath him made her feel vulnerable in a way in which she was not accustomed. She wanted to hide from the intimacy of the moment, but then she thought again, remembering the horrible loneliness and pain of the summer.

They were together, they were married, and she had wanted just this for weeks. She watched the hair tumble over his cheekbones and felt the groans in his chest. When he moved one arm and closed his hand over her breast, she fell apart.

She was still coming down to earth when she felt his arm hook under her left knee and draw it up. He sped up and started moving inside her with fast, frantic strokes, his other hand braced against the floor. There was no way she could keep up with his pace, so she pushed against the base of the bedside table with one hand to keep them from slamming into it and wrapped herself around him as best she could. His head had dropped back down to her neck, so she turned and carefully licked around the outside of his ear and back to the spot she knew he particularly liked. When he moaned a little louder against her neck she carefully sank her teeth into the delicate skin behind his ear. He pushed into her with such force they almost did slide into the table, and then he lay trembling on top of her.

At that moment, the King and Queen of England could have popped into the room and Clara wouldn’t have cared that they were sprawled naked on a blanket. She didn’t care that his weight was pushing her into the floor. Her body was still soaring from pleasurable aftershocks and his skin felt fantastic against hers. She never wanted this moment to end. As much as she’d enjoyed everything they’d ever done, this was different and she just wanted it to go on and on and on. At some point she knew they’d have to get up, put on nightclothes, check on Tommy, and crawl into bed together. Respectably, she thought happily, because they were married.

Richard lifted his weight off her and moved to her side, running his hand across her back and making her gasp again.

“Isn’t there a bible verse about this?” she whispered into his chest.

He swallowed. “Solomon. Mmm. Their bed is green.”

Clara nodded against him. “I knew you’d know.”

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Jersey, like many states, had a waiting period after the time a marriage license was issued and when the ceremony could take place (Angela and Jimmy got their license the day before they married in New York, for example). If you needed to get married quickly you went to Maryland, and if you were coming from Jersey, Philly, or Delaware you went to Elkton. It was very much the Vegas of its day as far as quickie weddings go. Except you did have to be married in a church. The Little Chapel, where Richard and Clara marry, still exists.  
> [Elkton](https://boundarystones.weta.org/2013/02/14/elkton-maryland-quickie-wedding-capital-east-coast)


	28. Family: Part One-August 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy makes a new friend; Jimmy learns that Clara and Richard are married; Jimmy shares information with Richard; a plan is made.

####  ** Elkton, Maryland **

There was no dawdling the next morning. Tommy was staring at them from the doorway before the sun was up, confused about where he was and asking for breakfast. Consulting the train station timetable, they realized they could catch the second train north if they hurried. Convincing Tommy to cooperate wasn’t easy, but between the two of them, they were all dressed and packed quickly. They only had to stop at the courthouse to pick up their marriage certificate.

“Get as many copies as they’ll let you. I’d like five, but three at least,” Clara asked when they arrived at the courthouse since she planned to stay outside with Tommy, who was complaining about his lack of breakfast.

He nodded but had no idea why she wanted so many. Clara bit her lip.

“Sometimes official paperwork disappears. I feel like that’s why Mr. Whitlock told us to come here, at least in part. Atlantic City’s influence is much weaker in Maryland. But I’d still feel better if we had extras, just in case.”

He came back with four and watched Clara divide them between their suitcase and her handbag. They caught their train and took Tommy to the dining car. A plate of waffles made Tommy happy, while he and Clara were content with coffee.

“I don’t know how you drink it like that,” Clara commented.

“Mmm. Through a straw?”

She smiled at him. “Very funny. I meant black.”

“Mmm. I don’t know how. You drink dessert for breakfast. You’ve had more. Milk then Tommy.” Clara slipped her hand under the table and laced her fingers into his. He cleared his throat before he continued. “Are you. Worried about telling your father?”

It took her a moment to answer. “I worry about so much that sometimes it’s hard to know what I should really worry about and what I’m being ridiculous over. Right now, especially, it feels like all my worries are twisted into a tangled ball of yarn and I can’t quite separate them into distinct strands. But he can’t do anything. We’re both over twenty-one, we’re married, it’s in Maryland’s roll book, we have copies of the certificate, we...made it official.” Clara cleared her throat. “Twice. He won’t like it, but what can he do? Besides, he has his own troubles to worry about.”

Richard tightened his grip on her hand. He didn’t know what Nucky would do, could do. But Leander Whitlock was concerned enough to tell him to marry Clara without delay to lessen Nucky’s ability to punish her for choosing Jimmy’s side, for choosing to leave with him that day.

And Richard had his own fears for Jimmy. If Nucky made it through the trial, Richard wasn’t certain Jimmy would survive.

After all, everyone knew the punishment for treason was death.

* * *

####  ** Darmody Beach House **

The smell hit them as they climbed out of the Ford. The acrid smell of burnt wood, paper, cloth. Another smell, more chemical, burned their noses. Richard flashed back to France, the pretty villages set aflame by stray shells, the scent of hundreds of years of history turning to ashes. He froze in place, no longer seeing the beach house.

Clara’s hand twisted into her skirt and a feeling of nausea rose within her. It felt like she was boiling from within. Closing her eyes she repeated silently I’m in Atlantic City I’m in Atlantic City I’m in Atlantic City. Someone’s burning trash someone’s burning trash someone’s burning trash. I’m in Atlantic City.

“Come on,” Tommy said, pulling at Richard’s hand. “I wanna go inside.”

Richard nodded, looking down at the boy and trying to refocus on where he was. Looking over at Clara, he saw the dazed expression on her face as she stared blankly toward the house.

“Clara?”

Someone was saying her name. Someone. She knew...I’m in Atlantic City, it’s Richard, I’m fine, she thought and turned toward them, trying to smile.

“Are you. Okay?”

She nodded, pushing away the memories buzzing on the edge of her conscious mind. “I should have eaten something. That smell, it’s making me sick.”

The front door opened and a young woman came out carrying the kitchen rug. A little boy, a smidge younger than Tommy, peeped out from behind her.

Richard pulled Tommy closer to him.

“You must be Tommy,” the woman said with a smile.

Richard and Clara shared a glance.

“I’m Mae Capone, I’m here with my husband? And this is our little boy, Sonny.”

Clara stared without saying anything, so Richard took a breath and answered. “I’m Richard Harrow. And this is. Mmm. My wife, Clara.”

“Nice to meet you,” Clara said.

Walking inside was walking into a house transformed. The curtains were ripped from the sunroom windows, the shelves were missing, and broken glass crunched underfoot. The walls were missing Angela’s artwork.

“Somebody broke my house!” Tommy cried out.

“Don’t. Touch anything,” Richard said, seeing the broken glass was not just underfoot but on most surfaces.

“I’m still trying to get all the glass up,” Mae said.

“What happened?” Clara asked.

Mae looked down. “It seems Al and Jimmy got to the house at some point yesterday and, well…”

“Daddy!” Tommy cried happily when Jimmy and Al came into the sunroom.

“Skeezit,” Jimmy said, and bent down to put his arm around the boy.

“I didn’t tell about the secret, and I was ring bringer again, and we ate cake in the hotel room,” Jimmy told his father in a rush.

Capone and Jimmy stared. “You got married?” Jimmy asked finally. “That’s why you went to Maryland?”

“Well ain’t that something, Frankenstein. Married this one, did ya? Best of luck.”

“Al, you don’t wish Mr. Harrow luck. You tell him congratulations and we give our best wishes for a happy future to Mrs. Harrow,” Mae interjected.

“Mrs. Harrow, Jesus,” Jimmy muttered.

“What happened here?” Clara said in a voice so level and pleasant that it caused Richard to automatically step toward Tommy. It was a voice she only used when she was angry. When she was beyond angry.

“Just taking out the trash. You know, cleaning up some.”

Richard pulled Tommy out of the room, and Mae Capone asked Tommy if he would like to play outside with Sonny. She nodded at Richard, who patted Tommy on the shoulder. He wasn’t certain he should let Tommy out of his sight, but he was very certain Jimmy and Clara shouldn’t be left alone for long.

“It’s a shame you didn’t start with a shower. I swear I can smell you from here. And did you burn things? What did…” Clara’s eyes went back to the bare walls, to the bare wall over the sofa where the painting of Angela and Tommy playing on the beach should hang. It was Clara’s favorite of all Angela’s paintings, because it captured Angela and Tommy’s relationship so perfectly.

“No,” Clara said. “Jimmy, tell me you did not do it.”

The look on Jimmy’s face momentarily quelled Clara’s anger. The pain and anguish was so raw that she took a half step towards him, her very oldest instinct always to help Jimmy when he was hurt.

“You’ll never guess what I found when we were burning things last night,” Jimmy responded. “The stationary was fancy. At first, I thought, Jesus, Angela was fucking a higher class of woman than I thought. But alas for poor Angela, it wasn’t one of her women but Clara’s.”

Capone looked from Jimmy to Clara nervously. Brothers and sisters brawled. He and Mafalda fought like back alley cats. But Mafalda didn’t have Frankenstein ready to fight for her. And Mafalda was sweet and pious. Clara was, in Capone’s opinion, a raging bitch who needed a slap in the mouth.

“Rich, you’ve heard Clara speak of Rose Grenville, right? She says her name so off-handily. Just her school chum.”

Richard half-nodded, barely listening. His attention was on the pile of debris, the remnants of a bonfire, outside the sunroom window. Angela’s art. He could still see the paint that was usually under Angela’s fingernails in his mind’s eye, and the serious look on her face when she sketched him. Her art was so much a part of her, so much a part of this house, how could Jimmy have destroyed what was left of her?

“Well, she’s really Lady Rose Grenville, daughter of the Earl of Danby. Clara doesn’t mention that, does she? Our Clara, she slums it with us. But don’t worry Richard, Lady Rose won’t turn her nose up at Mrs. Harrow. See, Rose is now Lady Rose Malley, wife of her father’s former employee. Clara marrying you barely rates as rebellion compared to Rose’s marriage. Oh, I’m sorry, Lady Rose.”

“Jimmy,” Clara said.

“So I’m thinking, why the hell was Lady Rose writing Angela back in January of ‘20? Turns out Her Ladyship was very concerned about Clara. How melancholy she seemed in her letters. How miserable she sounded about her engagement to Darcy Blaine. And how she didn’t quite seem to be recovering from her little wartime romance.”

“Stop,” Clara said through gritted teeth.

“See, Rich, while you were getting shelled in a tree and I was getting my leg blown to pieces do you know how sweet, pristine, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth Clara did her bit for the war effort? After all her conniving to get to Europe, do you know how she contributed? By spreading her legs for some injured officer. Did you even know his name, Clara, or did you....”

“Enough,” Richard said, his attention now back on Jimmy and Clara.

“How fucking dare you,” Clara breathed out.

“What I could never figure out is why you agreed to marry Blaine. Were you just hot for it? Any man on legs would do?”

Richard took another step towards Jimmy but Clara was closer and faster. She shoved Jimmy with all her strength.

“SHUT UP! Do you know why I had to let Darcy Blaine paw at me and breathe all over me and why I had to agree to marry him? Because that was the only way Father was going to let you back in Atlantic City! You were a fucking wreck in the hospital, so how dare you talk about my melancholy? You were a disaster, hell you are a disaster, but Tommy and Angela needed you. So that was the deal I made. A deal you totally mucked up, what, a month later when you and your little friend here played robbers in the woods and set off a war with Arnold Rothstein and you ended up banished to Chicago!”

“Nucky didn’t want me back?” Jimmy asked quietly.

Clara pressed her hands over her eyes, trying to push back the tears. “Who the hell knows what Father wanted, wants. Maybe he just knew you are my weakness, that I’d agree to what he wanted if I thought it was the only way we’d get you back. What a fantastic choice on my part.”

The silence was so heavy it lay over the sunroom like a thick quilt. Al wasn’t good with silence, it made him uncomfortable, and he didn’t like to be uncomfortable. It’s why he liked people who were quick with a joke or a line. It’s why he liked Jimmy Irish. Clara Thompson, well, Harrow, she was a whole different thing. And Frankenstein. Well, Frankenstein…

“Doncha worry about your officer, Clara. Jimmy here, he hired a whore for Frankenstein and Frankenstein got the hots for her. Always wanting to know how she’s doing. Same answer every time-she was a whore, she is a whore!” Al chuckled at his cleverness.

Five eyes moved to look at him. What the hell was wrong with these people, he wondered. He came to cheer Jimmy up, although the man had screwed up killing Thompson, screwed up a sure-fire liquor deal, and he, his bitchy sister, and the freak were going to glare at him?

“Are we gonna talk business or what?” Al said, glaring at Clara.

Clara looked around the room, walked to the beach door, and proceeded to slam it so hard behind her the house rattled. How lovely, she reflected, to be able to send away another adult like a wayward child when you were tired of dealing with them.

She watched Tommy, who was chattering away, play with Capone’s son. This is my life now, she realized with a start. I’m going to be sent outside or upstairs when it’s time for the grownups to talk. Perhaps they’ll let me serve dinner before I’m banished.

“Tommy is a very sweet boy,” Mae Capone said.

Clara swallowed. “He is. Sonny seems very sweet as well.” Very quiet, Clara thought. Tommy was talking his ear off.

Mae was quite accustomed to the look of barely contained fury. She also had sussed out the truth of the quartet in the beach house. It was a complicated familial arrangement, but the little boy was so sweet. 

“May I tell you a secret? Well, not a secret exactly, but something I don’t tell most people?”

Clara turned and looked at Mae Capone, this time really looking at her. Mae was very pretty, and looked to be about Clara’s age. Her dress was simple but lovely, and she was quite well-spoken. In all ways, she was far more refined than Clara would have expected the wife of that little troll Capone to be.

“Sonny isn’t mine. That is, I didn’t give birth to him. But I couldn’t love him anymore if I had. My friend, she and Al...well. Her parents were Irish like mine, lace curtain Irish, and they didn’t approve of their daughter with an Italian. They wouldn’t consent to the marriage, and they sent her away when she was expecting. Then she died, and they refused to raise the baby. They dropped him off on the Capone stoop in Brooklyn. Just left him. Al came to tell me, and…

“I loved Al. I’d always loved Al, but he only ever looked at Kathleen. But when Sonny showed up on his doorstep, he needed a mother for him and so I got them both.”

Imagine pining after that potato-faced troll, Clara thought to herself.

Mae saw the look on Clara’s face. “I thought you’d understand loving someone when others might not see the attraction.”

How dare this woman compare Richard to Capone, Clara thought furiously. Richard was lovely and...Oh. Somehow Capone was all of those things to Mae.

“You are right. My apologies,” Clara stood for a moment watching the children. “As much as I love Tommy and Jimmy, I couldn’t have married Jimmy, though.”

Mae laughed. “Of course not! But you are effectively Tommy’s aunt, are you not? Jimmy is very nice, but he’s not steady. Your Mr. Harrow, he’s steady. That boy is going to need steady, and he’s going to need mothering.”

Clara felt the world closing in on her. What had she been thinking, that Jimmy would suddenly be capable of doing all of this alone? In her heart she knew in a flash that if she stopped caring for Tommy Jimmy would undoubtedly hand him back over to Gillian, convincing himself that what happened between Gillian and Jimmy would never happen to Tommy. Clara refused to take that chance with Tommy.

“Families don’t have to be a mother, father, and their children. It can look how it needs to look. I live with my mother-in-law and brothers-in-law. It’s not easy, but at the end of the day I still have Al.”

* * *

The Capones had left, Tommy was napping upstairs, and Richard was trying to salvage what he could of Angela’s possessions. Clara was sweeping, but she knew she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

“I’m happy for you both,” Jimmy said quietly from the doorway.

“Yes, I can tell,” Clara answered without looking up and without bothering to disguise the anger in her voice.

“So you are mad at me,” Jimmy said.

The self-pity Clara heard in his voice made her want to pick up one of the glass shards and throw it at him. “How could you do that?” Clara asked. “I’d told Richard, but what if I hadn’t? That was my story, Jimmy, and you just shared it with the world. Capone now knows about it. And it wasn’t like...I didn’t just. I wasn’t in the trenches, and I’ve never compared what I went through to what you or Richard experienced. But I wasn’t sitting around pouring tea and smiling at soldiers, either.”

Clara leaned down to pick up spoons off the floor. The bottoms were burnt. “What happened to these?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, okay?” Jimmy responded, ignoring Clara's question about the spoons.

“I’ve been the kid who had to put herself to bed,” Clara said, throwing the spoons in the sink and seeing dishes coated in white powder. Mae must’ve tossed dish powder on them but not added water, Clara thought, but when she added water no suds appeared. She added more dish powder. “Have I ever told you about when I had my monthly for the first time?”

“Jesus, Clara, I…”

“Shut up and listen. I was younger than most, and I suppose it hadn’t occurred to Aunt June or Gillian to prepare me yet. So I wake up, my stomach was upset, my back hurt, and, well, blood. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. A maid found me, and she was so kind. She brought me tea and a hot water bottle and told me what was happening and obtained supplies and explained to me what to do. She told Father I was ill. I don’t even know her name, Jimmy, but she was the one who took care of me. I don’t want a maid caring for Tommy like that. I want someone to read him stories and tuck him in and take care of him when he’s sick. It will forever be wrong that it's not Angela, but it has to be someone, it has to be consistent, and it can’t be Gillian.”

“So you and Richard are in this for good?” Jimmy asked.

Richard walked in carrying two slightly scorched paintings in hand. “These didn’t. Burn. The others. Are lost.”

Clara picked up one of the burned spoons and started scrubbing in earnest in an attempt to keep from strangling Jimmy where he stood.

“I just,” Jimmy reached for a bottle of gin and took a swig. “I’m angry at her for leaving us. And for loving someone else.”

So you destroyed her legacy, you made sure Tommy won’t have any way to reconstruct who his mother was, Clara thought angrily.

“But I think I have a plan to fix this. Richard, we are going to give Chalky White what he wants. I’m going to pay him, I’m going to pay him extra, for every person he lost in that KKK raid. And you and I? We are going to find the KKK members who killed Chalky’s people and deliver them to Chalky personally. That will end the strike. And then I’m going to ask him to setup a meeting with Nucky. I can still make this better.”

“And then what, Prince James? More deals with Capone, more liquor, you go back to work for my father, what?” Clara asked from the sink.

“I don’t know what next is, Clara.” I don’t know if there is a next, he thought. “But I think this might be the start of salvaging all of us. Of fixing things. Of making what can be made right, right. Nuck’s trial is scheduled for the end of the month. I...”

Clara nodded, the image of the electric chair never far from her mind. The sound of Tommy moving around upstairs made her go to him, fearful he’d come downstairs without putting his shoes on. She didn’t trust her sweeping.

“You can’t ever. Talk to her like that. Again,” Richard said, forcing himself to look Jimmy in the eye.

“She’s my sister, Rich, she’s…”

“She’s my. Wife.”

Jimmy nodded, and refused to think about how he felt. Instead, he had another swig of gin.

* * *

It was much later that night before Clara and Richard were alone. Clara was sitting at the desk, reading over a letter she’d been writing to Rose before Angela’s funeral. Just two days ago, Clara thought. For a moment she tried to think about how to add in all that happened since, but instead, she picked up her pen, signed it ‘Clara Thompson Harrow’ and added a postscript that another letter would follow in the next day or so. When Richard came into the bedroom from the bath he sat on the edge of the bed.

Clara knew what they were both thinking. She moved to sit next to him. “We weren’t children when we met. I’d told you about what happened in the war. I assumed you’d been with someone, or someones, before.”

“Just one. Really,” Richard swallowed hard. “You didn’t tell me. You were in Europe. During the war.”

Clara looked up, surprised. “I wasn’t trying to hide it, I thought I had. I just don’t enjoy talking about it.”

“I understand.”

“It wasn’t,” Clara closed her eyes. “It’s not like how Jimmy made it sound, except…” Except I lost my mind and thought I fell in love in the space of hours and did end up losing my virginity on the floor but why am I only made to feel guilty about these things.

“I kissed boys at parties and had crushes, but until that day, and then until you the only man I’d ever been in love with was Jeff Tesreau, who pitched for the Giants when I was a girl. We went to dinner with him once when I was fourteen or so. I’m fairly certain I embarrassed myself,” Clara said with a smile.

“Mmm. There was a girl. In Plover. Jenny Hastings. We rode horses. Together. She wrote me when. I was in the. Army. She knitted me a scarf,” Richard stopped talking for a moment. “She married my. Cousin before I got. Back.”

After she found out what happened to you, Clara realized. If I ever meet this other Mrs. Harrow she’s going to get a full dose of the very worst Princess Clara has to offer. Every trick I learned from my father, from Rose’s grandmother, from every society dragon I’ve ever had to deal with.

“What an idiot she,” Clara said softly.

They were quiet for a moment.

“The woman. Capone was talking about,” Richard began haltingly. “She was very. Kind. About not minding…”

Oh, there’s a limit to how much of an adult I can be, Clara realized. “I’m glad she was kind. And there was nothing wrong with visiting her. But no more chorus girls or anyone other me from now on, okay? I don’t much fancy sharing.”

He looked at her with horror. “Clara we’re married. Mmm. I would never. Betray you.”

She leaned her shoulder into his side. “Good. We should go horseback riding together, I haven't’ been in an age and quite enjoy a good hack.” 

Please let us get past this point in our lives, she thought, and live a life where we go horseback riding and go up to the mountains and swim in ponds and have whole years of blessed boredom. Please, Clara prayed to a god she'd stopped believing in when she was eight years old.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: This chapter was getting unwieldy, so I broke into two parts. The next part will be up Saturday (plus, I needed a distraction!). There's a lot of historical and canonical notes for this part, though.
> 
> Sonny Capone was born before Al married Mae. Some historians believe Sonny's mother died in childbirth and was an Irish friend of Mae's whose parents didn't approve of the Italian Al. That perspective fits in well with the idea of what family means. Mae isn't less Sonny's mother if she didn't birth him; Clara and Jimmy wouldn't have a different relationship if Nucky was Jimmy's biological father, et cetera.
> 
> The burnt spoons are from cooking heroin, and the white powder Clara assumes is dish powder is cocaine. Al and Jimmy went on quite the bender that ended up with Angela's belongings burned and the beach house trashed. Historically, this is the start of Capone experimenting with drugs.
> 
> There's actually a picture of Al and Jimmy burning the beach house furniture and Angela's paintings. It's a deleted scene from "To the Lost." In that episode, the beach house is notably empty and destroyed, although it wasn't in the scenes after Angela's murder when Richard and Gillian were in the house. I thought that was an important bit.
> 
> Clara and Richard obviously love each other, but that list of things they aren't talking about is ever-growing.
> 
> I'd love to hear what everyone thinks!


	29. Family Part Two: August 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything changes.

The first weeks of the Harrows’ marriage involved neither hotels nor days alone in a secluded lakeside cabin, but instead were lived in the guest room of the Darmody beach house and consisted of comforting Tommy and helping Jimmy. Some nights, when Clara lay alone in the guest bed listening to Jimmy talk to her husband she longed for the weeks spent at Richard’s, weeks where she wore nothing to bed and didn’t have to share his attention.

And nothing was resolved. Her father wouldn’t even speak to her. She’d called the house and sent a note. Margaret had replied, sending best wishes and a lovely pair of silver candlesticks. Nothing, not even screaming, from her father. Even as a child Clara had particularly hated when her father punished her by ignoring her existence. Clara sighed. Silence was better than some of the alternatives, she thought. For weeks Richard and Jimmy had been searching for the butcher without luck and surveying the Klansmen. She knew what was coming. It must be done, she told herself as she bathed Tommy and burnt meals and tried to work out how households ran. Honestly, it would have been easier to take over running the entire Ritz (well, when there wasn’t a strike) then trying to run one single house. But there were moments of happiness in the difficult, grief soaked days. 

Still, she feared both what she knew was coming and the things that were only real in her darkest imaginings.

When Jimmy and Richard went to leave that August morning she could feel how far away Richard was from her even as he said goodbye and knew today was the day. Come back, she thought as he walked away. I don’t care about the rest, just come back. 

She was grateful for the inescapability of housework and Tommy’s needs. They went swimming and played in the sand. Once more she made ham sandwiches and made Tommy drink milk and eat an apple to relieve some of her guilt over what she fed him, although she didn’t refuse either of them Oreo cookies for dessert. Swimming wore him out, so he went down easily for his nap. Clara escaped to the sunroom to write while he slept. The deadline for her new Ruth Fielding novel loomed, but instead of focusing on Ruth’s adventures she stared out the window and worried about what Richard and Jimmy were doing. The KKK. Clara knew they were made up of the baker, the paperboy, and the telegraph operator but she also knew they were crazy. Why else would they run around in sheets? Newly intimate with the struggle of laundry, Clara shuddered at what keeping those ridiculous outfits clean must entail. And then they were going into Chalky’s territory, and…

Stop, she told herself firmly. Stop. Richard and Jimmy are more than capable. What must be done must be done. The strike must be brought to a close before the entirety of the summer was lost, before Jimmy lost all control of the city. He was going to try and save Father, save Eli once he made things right with Chalky White. And killing those horrid Klansmen could never be wrong, could it? 

Clara tried to push away the image of her father and uncle being strapped to the electric chair. Or, her heart quickened, what if this all went wrong and it was Jimmy or Richard? The prosecutor’s voice was back in her head, asking if every man she loved was a murderer. People like the prosecutor, life must be so easy for people like them, she thought. So black and white, so completely lacking in shading or complexities. 

Jimmy and Richard were trying to save them all. That was what was important, she decided. That, and waking up with Richard’s legs entwined with hers while Jimmy woke in the room down the hall from his son. That’s what she held dear. That’s what mattered. Everything else was just detail.

Tommy would be up soon, she thought and forced her mind to consider Ruth’s most recent predicament. No more had she hit her stride than she heard Tommy’s feet coming down the stairs. With a sigh, she covered her typewriter. She’d barely written a quarter of what she set out to write. Before she could do anything else, the messenger from the stationary store came with her order, and Clara was delighted with how her order looked. Rose must be the first person she wrote using her new stationery, Clara decided. She’d write to her tonight.

Errands, chores, and snacks took up the rest of the day. It didn’t matter how she proceeded or how much Richard did, she always felt behind. There was never a moment she didn’t feel guilty about ignoring some responsibility. 

She started by gathering the laundry to take to the laundress. Richard had gathered his clothes and Tommy’s, but she had to get the linen and Jimmy’s. Clara sighed. Jimmy’s room was a disaster. Tommy went and got a new box from the service porch, and Clara began throwing the rubbish in it. Countless empty bottles, and more of those damned paper packets. Ashes in everything but ashtrays. Jimmy’s clothes were everywhere, and his undershirts, shirts, and sheets were all stained by the oozing blood of his wound. Shouldn’t that be getting better, Clara thought? She should probably make Jimmy send for the doctor. 

She was also slowed down because she couldn’t find the burlap sacks for the kitchen laundry anywhere. Another box had to be procured. Tommy had a meltdown as they prepared to leave, and it occurred to her he was probably hungry so she made a piece of bread with jam and let him take it with him. She sent a silent apology to Richard about what was about to happen to the car. After leaving the laundry with the laundress, and visiting the library and grocery store, it was somehow time to cook again.

Back at home Clara had to face her least favorite task, lighting the oven. Lighting the burners wasn’t terrible, but she couldn’t shake every horror story she’d ever heard about people blowing up their houses just by lighting their oven. Richard had shown her how to use kitchen shears to cut up the chicken into pieces, but the feel of the scissors slicing through the meat made her think of the Commodore and made her hate the task even more. Giving into Tommy’s entreaties to help her, she sat him on his knees in a chair and he dipped the chicken pieces in flour and seasoning. After she put the potatoes on to boil she remembered no bed had linen, so she and Tommy went upstairs to remake the beds.

Tommy put clean towels out in the bathrooms while Clara put sheets on the beds, pinning the corners into place because she couldn’t figure out how to make the sheets stay in place otherwise. By time time she remembered dinner the potato water had boiled away. It didn’t help, Clara thought bitterly, to try and do things efficiently. The potatoes weren’t yet stuck to the pan, something that had happened a few nights before, so she added more water and hoped for the best. 

Tommy played with his toy soldiers while she finished dinner. Clara leaned against the doorway and watched him for a moment as he told his soldiers some complicated tale that sounded like a compilation of her own stories about the mermaids of Atlantis, the book they read last night, and the war stories Jimmy told him. He really was such a darling boy, she thought, even if he ate all the time, had an amazing instinct for interrupting her private moments with Richard, and said her name at least ten thousand times a day. 

“Dinner is ready, go wash your hands,” she told him.

“Will it be as bad as last time?” Tommy asked seriously, and Clara winced as she remembered the abomination she’d served two nights ago.

“Hopefully not,” she answered. 

She watched Tommy carefully try the chicken (dark meat only, off the bone, cut into pieces), the peas, the potatoes, and the tomatoes. Nothing was touching anything else. She had learned that lesson.

He looked up at her and smiled. “It’s not awful!”

High praise, she thought and started eating her own dinner. 

Tommy ate strawberries and cream for dessert while Clara attacked the astounding pile of dishes they’d created in one day. One. Tomorrow they’d be another pile of dishes. And there was the whole kitchen to wipe down, she had to remember to set out the milk jugs for the milkman, and as always there was sand everywhere.

A noise startled them both. Clara turned and thought she saw someone in the yard. Was it the butcher, still looking for Jimmy? 

“Tommy, go play the game,” she whispered. Out of fear when they moved back into the beach house, she’d impressed on Tommy the importance of the game of hiding until only she, Jimmy, or Richard told him to come out.

As he ran up the stairs she grabbed the shotgun from the service porch and quickly loaded two shells. Her heart was pounding so loudly she couldn’t hear anything else.

The silhouette grew clearer. Someone was definitely outside. Clara cocked the shotgun. 

“Clara? You inside?” A familiar, young male voice called from the window. “I’m not sure what door to use?”

“Willie?” Clara asked, her heart in her throat. It was Eli and June’s oldest boy. What was he doing here? “Come around back.”

Clara sat the shotgun down, horrified that she almost shot her cousin.

“Hey, Clara. My mother sent a letter to you.”

“Tommy, come down!” Clara called up. “Everything is okay.”

Tommy hesitantly peered down the stairs and then ran down and attached to her leg. She knew he wouldn’t let go for the remainder of the evening. Willie ate the rest of the dessert before he left, and she put the leftovers from dinner into the icebox and forwent finishing the dishes or sweeping sand off the floor (no matter how much she swept there was always more, she thought bitterly). 

“How about I put you down in our bed and Richard can carry you to your room when he and Daddy come home?”

Tommy nodded, but by the time Clara got him bathed and into pajamas he was sobbing for his mother. Her head was slamming against her skull, and worry for Richard and Jimmy was souring her stomach and making her regret eating dinner. She lay next to Tommy, rubbing his back and telling him about the adventures of the mermaids until he finally fell asleep clutching his stuffed cow. She locked the bedroom door and placed the shotgun under her side of the bed.

From the sunroom she’d brought up her manuscript and the new box of stationary. She sat in bed and handwrote revisions and outlined the rest of the chapters until her hand ached. What she wanted to do was pace, and being trapped in the bedroom with the sleeping Tommy made her feel like a caged animal. She picked up a notecard to write to Rose, but couldn’t think of what to say that wouldn’t worry her.

It was well after midnight when she heard familiar footsteps on the porch. She lifted the shotgun and silently made her way to the bedroom door. 

“Fuck a bear,” Jimmy’s voice drifted up the staircase. Clara wasn’t going to classify what he was doing as singing.

“Clara?” Richard called out, hearing the bedroom door open. 

“Just making sure it was you.” Clara bit back a sigh. “Tommy’s in our bed. When you come up, will you carry him to his room?.”

First, she forced herself to be grateful they were back and well. Hopefully they accomplished what needed to be accomplished. That feeling lasted a few minutes.

We haven’t even married a fortnight, Clara thought as she flopped down on the bed. So sure, I’m absolutely thrilled about my husband spending even more time with Jimmy, instead of coming upstairs to be with me. It’s just perfectly fine. I absolutely wanted to spend the time we should be on our honeymoon cleaning house, cooking, taking care of Tommy, and being sent upstairs like a child while the men talk. It’s exactly how I imagined these days would be. How many nights have I already gone to bed to the sound of them talking downstairs? 

You are being unfair, she told herself. Jimmy’s mourning Angela. Richard’s being a good friend, he’s just so loyal, he’s just…

He’s just not necessarily the most loyal to me, Clara thought and the idea burned at her. It was one of things they needed to talk about, but instead, they got married. Where were they going to live? Were they now tied to Jimmy permanently?

Tommy kicked her as she considered. She moved his legs away from her and fixed the pillow under his head. Oh, poor kiddo, she thought. How could she leave Tommy?

Shamefully, Clara felt hot tears slide down her cheeks. She looked at the wall, beyond which her friend-Jimmy’s wife, Tommy’s mother-had been slaughtered. A better person would be crying for her friend, Clara realized, for the child next to her, for Jimmy downstairs. 

Downstairs Jimmy poured two more bourbons as he continued to tell war stories. The good ones, about the hijinks in the trenches. The ones where he told the center of the story but not the edges, not telling that as his friend sang Jimmy’s feet were rotting from trench foot or all of their fingers were covered in rat bites from the rodents that snacked on them whenever they grabbed a few minutes of sleep. 

“I’d be alone. Mmm. For days on end. Going from blind to blind. Just water. Rations. Rifle. And then I’d go back. To camp. And the boys would be joking. And I’d think. This is where I’m meant to be.”

Jimmy stared down at his friend. Fuck that. The whole goddamn war was a mistake. The bodies in the trenches, the boy caught in the barbed wire, Clara under a table thinking she was going to die, the piece of his thigh that was now a permanent resident of France, the half of Richard’s face that never came home. All a mistake. All things that shouldn’t have happened. 

“Nobody was meant to be there,” Jimmy said, tossing back the rest of his drink.

“But that’s. Where we were.” Richard looked down at the floor for a long moment, testing out what he wanted to say. “We’re still there. Aren’t we?” There’s still blood on my hands, Richard thought. You tell me to kill someone, I do it. Avenge Pearl, keep Clara safe, end a strike, right a wrong, benefit a liquor deal, I do what I must to protect you.

“It’s time to come home, Richard.”

“How?” Richard whispered. Upstairs, Clara lay waiting, expecting him to pick up Tommy and carry him to bed. The last skin he’d touched was that of the men they’d tied up, tossed in the truck, and delivered to Chalky White, so how could the next flesh under his hands be that of an innocent child or of his wife? He’d shot a man, threatened to shoot more, but it was those he trussed up who were in his mind tonight. Scalping Jackson Parkhurst had been his slowest death. He liked to be quick, just get the job done. The men they’d delivered to Chalky were going to die slow, were probably still dying. It wasn’t even part of his job to decide if they deserved it.

Fuck, Jimmy thought. “I don’t know. But promise me you’ll try.” He was silent for a moment. 

“They need you, Richard,” Jimmy said, and then motioned with his jaw towards the second floor. “Sometimes I think I should tell you to take them and run, go buy a hardware store and change your names and never tell me or Nucky where Clara and Tommy are. Angela...I never came back. Even with Pearl…”

It was the way Richard looked at him that made Jimmy think about Memorial Day. How Richard looked that night, Jimmy’s decision to send him to Clara after they did away with Parkhurst. I owe you, Clara, Jimmy thought.

“You can’t go away from her. Her mother did that. Long before Clara found Mabel on the bathroom floor, her mother abandoned Clara little by little. Don’t do that. It’d kill her, Rich.”

Jimmy kept Richard talking for longer, even though he knew he should let him go upstairs to Clara, because Jimmy knew what was waiting for him. The silence. The darkness. Nothing to hold back his guilt, nothing to stop him from thinking about Angela, about Pearl, about Gillian. Even in death, he couldn’t bring himself to be faithful to Angela. But also his guilt about the rest. What happened with Nucky. The images of the war. His growing acceptance that he no longer had a future. 

The gambit tonight needed to work to free Clara and Richard, to ensure Tommy’s safety, even if his own life was already forfeit. Jimmy had made his peace with Chalky White. Now he had to just pray Chalky would convince Nucky to see him.

When Richard went upstairs he found Tommy asleep with his feet against Clara’s hip. Moonlight glinted off something on the floor, and he saw the shotgun laying where Clara could easily grab it. The hairs on the back of his neck raised. Something had badly scared Clara. 

When he lifted Tommy off the bed the boy curled against him. It’s why he and Jimmy did what they did, he thought as he settled Tommy into his own room. Afterward, he tried to scrub the feel of the night off his skin. Coming back into their bedroom he picked up the pile of papers and pencil Clara had fallen asleep with and placed them on the dresser. A cardboard box sat there, the lid askew. When he went to close it he saw it was some kind of fancy paper. The variety of paper Clara used always fascinated him. What sort was this? He knew he was delaying getting into bed with her, but he was also interested. Lifting one, he saw they were made of the heavy, creamy paper all of Clara’s stationery was made of, but instead of her name they were engraved with the letters R, H, C. 

Clara wasn’t certain what time it was when she felt the bed dip and heard the familiar sound of tin striking wood. Still half asleep she rolled towards him.

It was like rolling into a marble statue. He was absolutely rigid and she could feel the tension rise when she pressed against him. Still lost in a fog of sleep, her mind leaped to the idea he no longer even wanted this from her. She pulled back like his skin had scorched her. 

Clara stretching across his side felt normal, like any other night. It wasn’t, though, and he couldn’t bear for her to touch him. He had bathed and was wearing clean linen. There was no outward sign of what he did, he knew, but the night after a kill was always tormenting. These nights invited the darkness back, darkness he knew he deserved. He didn’t want the darkness touching her. Still, when Clara pulled away it felt like a slap. She knows, he thought, and now can’t bear to touch me. 

Waking up fully, the realization hit her like a gut punch. Oh, he’s killed someone tonight, she thought, and remembered what he’d looked like when he showed up at the Ritz Memorial Day night. Was he like this after he’d saved her from the d’Alessios? She had been so out of it she couldn’t recall, he’d just been there for her when she needed him. When he and Jimmy had gone to Philadelphia to take care of the rest of the d’Alessios he had largely avoided her until Thanksgiving. 

Was this always the cost, she wondered. Was he okay while he drank and ate steaks with Jimmy, but then when he was alone the guilt crashed over him? Richard hadn’t been raised by Nucky Thompson, Clara thought. She and Jimmy had learned how to rationalize any action they felt they needed to take. They had learned from the best. 

Did her father have any guilt over ordering the death of Margaret’s husband? No, of course not, she knew. In her father’s eyes he did it to save Margaret and the children, and it never even occurred to him he was driven by his own desire for Margaret. After he sent Jimmy and Richard after the d’Alessios her Father never gave them another thought. And was she much better, she wondered? She knew Richard was the one sent after the boy who tried to pull her into that car and she pushed it from her mind. None of them were safe while the d’Alessios were alive, everyone did what they must. She wasn’t going to judge Richard for carrying out her father’s or Jimmy’s orders, any more than she’d judge him for carrying out a General’s battle plan.

She rolled over so she was laying on her back and moved her hand so that it was brushing against his. They were all simply doing what they must, she thought fiercely. “I’m so glad you are home, that you are here with me,” she whispered and felt his hand move slightly.

“What. Scared. You?” he scratched out.

“My cousin Willie. He brought me a letter, but he was walking around the house and I didn’t know it was him. I made Tommy play the game, so then he was scared the rest of the night and I…” 

And I was terrified, Clara thought, because the butcher was here in this house, he killed Angela yards away from where we sleep and who else is after Jimmy, is after my father, and sees me as just a pawn in some game no one asked if I wanted to play?

She felt his hand move over hers, so she let her foot drift over to touch his leg. 

“You got. New stationery,” he said, and Clara could hear the hesitancy in his voice.

“Yes, we’ve gotten a few presents and I need to send thank you notes,” she responded. 

His throat clicked. “Mmm. Would you have. Ordered them. No matter who you married?”

Clara wasn’t certain what he was asking. “Yes. But I...it’s nicer doing things like ordering stationery with our monogram because it’s us, you know?”

They lay silently.

“I know you are doing this to try and save my family,” Clara started, and then she giggled. 

The sound was so incongruous that he turned to look at her.

“Richard, I’m so sorry. Do you know what I’ve done to you? I’ve stuck you with my crazy family, now they are all yours as well.”

He was silent for a moment, thinking about it. Nucky Thompson was his father-in-law. Until a year and a half ago, he didn’t know men like Nucky actually existed outside of novels. He barely knew girls like Clara existed, and it still amazed him that Clara’s friends were fancier than she. She knew a Lady. To him, that was a person who only existed in books, not real life, not someone that his wife would consider one of her closest friends. 

“Am I. Your Family?”

Clara’s breath caught, and she was suddenly glad they were laying so he couldn’t see her face. “You know you are,” she said quietly. “You’ve felt like family and you’ve felt like home for such a long time. And what scares me is I’m not sure that you see that our family needs to come first. I don’t want you hurt or...worse trying to save someone else. Tommy makes things complicated, but we still have dreams and I still want them.”

She felt his leg press against hers. 

“Do you know what I’m thinking about?” she asked suddenly. 

“Almost never,” he answered honestly.

Clara rolled over so she was laying on his shoulder. At first he tensed, but then she felt him relax and his hand came up to trail along her back. “I read an article about a company in Ohio making steel kitchen cabinets. I saved it for you. They are apparently much easier to clean than wood cabinets, and considering what I’m like in the kitchen I thought those might be a good idea for us. I’ve certainly decided this month I want a sink with a built-in drainboard. I don’t understand how people wash dishes without getting water everywhere.”

Living among Clara’s things, he had new thoughts about the amount of storage they would need. If their wedding presents from her friends were all going to be silver things for their table, they’d need places to keep them. 

Clara’s leg was now between his. He should push her away, he didn’t want to want her on a night like tonight, but he also wanted to forget. As she climbed on top of him he chose forgetfulness.

Jimmy dropped another empty bottle to the floor. He should go to bed, try to spend some with Tommy tomorrow, he thought. After lunch, but that’s what Clara was for, right? Getting Tommy up and starting his day.

He stumbled upstairs and stopped to look in at Tommy, tucked in and holding his stuffed cow. Who had done that, Richard or Clara? He should have come up and tucked him in. He really needed to do more, but wasn’t it better if Tommy really didn’t remember him? Just let him get used to having Richard and Clara care for him?

As he shut Tommy’s door and stumbled towards the small guest room, he heard Clara whimper, and then he heard the rhythmic squeak of bedsprings.

Jesus Christ, he thought and fled to his room, going straight to the top dresser drawer, where he had more of Luciano’s samples. Also there were spoons he bought at Woolworth’s because Clara wouldn’t shut up about burnt spoons. You’d think she bought them the way she carried on. An old tie tight around his bicep, the slide of the needle, and then blessed blankness.

The tie was still around his arm when he went to sleep.

* * *

The house was quiet when Richard returned. Jimmy was at his father’s house, meeting with those still involved with the ruins of the conspiracy. It meant Clara was left without a vehicle, but she had insisted she was going to stay at the house and try to finish her book. 

Standing in the sunroom he could see their towels on the sand and Clara and Tommy playing in the surf. They both looked happy. He wanted to go to them but decided to start dinner. They’d be hungry when they came in.

Even with the ocean breeze coming in it was still warm. He took off his jacket, vest, and tie, and rolled up his sleeves before opening the icebox and seeing about dinner. The mask was bothering him. He’d hear Clara bringing Tommy in, he decided. He could take it off.

Dinner was well underway when he heard someone outside the house. He had a split second to decide between grabbing his gun or grabbing the mask. The gun. Leaving the kitchen he crept through the service porch door and went towards the beachside of the house to make sure no one got near Clara and Tommy. One man stood looking towards them, and Richard couldn’t see his face. The man didn’t know Richard was near him until the barrel of the Glock pressed against his head.

“Harrow,” an Irish voice said. 

Damn it, Richard thought. He lowered the gun and covered his face. 

“Mr. Thompson is here to see his daughter. Are you going to shoot us?”

“You shouldn’t. Creep around. The house. I’ll let you in the front door.”

Richard went back through the kitchen, slid his mask on and turned the burners off.

Nucky Thompson glowered at him from the front door. It was the first time Richard had seen him since he and Clara married. Richard had wanted to go to Mr. Thompson and tell him in person about marrying Clara, tell him that he would always do his best to take care of her, and apologize for not asking him in advance.

Clara’s eyes flashed when he told her. “No thank you. I don’t require my father’s permission to get married. No one expected me to trek to Wisconsin and ask your father, did they? So why would you need to ask my father about something I’m quite capable of deciding for myself?”

Jimmy looked at him like he had just started speaking Russian. “Jesus, Rich, are you trying to make Clara a widow? You can’t go to Nucky’s. It’s amazing you and the Irishman didn’t end up in a shootout when you went to get her. Let Clara handle this. There’s enough going on with Nucky.”

“Mmm. Mr. Thompson, please. Come in.”

“I see this farce is continuing,” Nucky said, gesturing towards Richard’s left hand. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t ask...” Richard started.

“Why? So I could have told you no to what’s left of your face?”

The Irishman coughed but Richard could hear the barely disguised laughter. The side door creaked open.

“Richard’s home!” Tommy’s voice reverberated through the half-empty rooms. Another voice could barely be heard answering him. “‘Cause dinner smells good!”

Tommy ran in wearing only a towel. “Clara says she has to wash the salt out of her hair. I helped Clara and was good all day but I didn’t get one Oreo for lunch so can we make shortred cookies?”

Tommy stopped and stepped closer to Richard, who put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You’re Clara’s daddy,” he said finally after staring at Nucky.

“That’s right,” Nucky said, using the affable voice he saved for children and voters.

“My name is Thompson like yours. Clara lived with you in a big hotel and we ate waffles in her room when her name was Thompson but now it's not.”

“Yes, Clara used to live with me,” Nucky answered. “But now she lives with you.”

The look Nucky shot Richard when he said this made Richard squirm.

Tommy nodded. “Uh-huh. She and Richard live in the guest room and I always have to knock I can never open the door, never, unless they say it's okay because married people need pirates and even if I hear a noise Richard says do not open unless they say I can. And you took a long time to say okay the other night,” Tommy said, looking up at Richard accusingly. “The hall is dark and I heard Clara talking but no one said okay come in and my cow was scared.”

The door to the beach squeaked again before anyone could answer him. “You’re home,” Clara called out. “That smells delicious, much better than what I was going to cook, I’m positively famished because…”

Clara came around the corner wearing only the underpiece of her swimsuit, having hung her swim dress and stockings with Tommy’s swimsuit to dry, and she was using her towel to dry her hair.

Sleater once more tried to hide his amusement. Here he was, ready to go into battle with Mr. Thompson’s feared enemies, and so far they’d walked into a picture from Ladies Home Journal. Quite the little domestic scene. Who knew, though, that Clara Thompson was hiding such great tits?

Why the hell was her father and Owen Sleater standing in the beach house, with Richard in his shirtfront, his mask askew, Clara wondered as she forced her face into a pleasant social mask and wrapped the towel around her body. 

“Father, Mr. Sleater,” Clara said in her brightest social voice, walking towards Richard and Tommy. 

“Is this how you parade yourself?” Nucky snapped at her.

“We were hardly expecting company,” Clara responded evenly. She kissed the side of Richard’s mouth. “Let me get changed and we can talk. Come, Tommy. Let’s go upstairs.”

“But I’m hungry,” he whined.

“We’ll eat soon enough,” Clara said and took Tommy by the arm. “I’ll be right back.”

Clara all but dragged Tommy up the stairs behind her. She convinced Tommy that being able to play with his soldiers before dinner was a great treat, and then promised they would read more of Princess of Mars and that yes, Richard would read the Martian parts and he could skip his bath if he would just get his pajamas on. She then quickly yanked on a step-in and pulled a chambray summer housedress over her head, ignoring the fact her skin was still damp. She stepped into her straw flats and tied a scarf like a headband around her head to hold her wet hair off her face, put her rings on, and raced from the room.

“Clara?” Tommy stood in the hallway.

“Kiddo, go play with your soldiers! We’ll eat dinner soon.”

“Is this the game?” Tommy asked seriously.

Clara stopped. “Tommy, no. We just need to talk about grown-up things, and then my father will leave and we will eat dinner.”

“If your Daddy said my name would I stop hiding?”

Clara bit her lip and leaned down to his height. “Absolutely not. Your daddy, Richard, me. That’s it. Those are the only people you ever stop playing the game for.”

“So what would it take to make this go away?” Nucky asked when they were seated in the living room.

“Jimmy wants. To make things right. Wi-”

Nucky glared. “James can speak for himself. What will it take to make you go away before Clara’s life is permanently ruined?”

Richard swallowed and looked down at his hands. 

“It’s not like this is a real marriage,” Nucky continued. “You could end it and Clara’s life would go on as it should. This would just be a little aberration. You wouldn’t even need a divorce, just an annulment. It would be like this never happened. ”

Nucky pulled something from his jacket pocket. “You’d have to leave Atlantic City, of course. For both your sakes. I’m not a cruel man, Harrow. I’m willing to pay. I’m willing to pay quite a lot so that you can both have the futures that are rightfully yours. Clara isn’t going to be happy playing poor for long, she’ll want the life she was born into. And you’ll tire of this, won’t you? You'll want to go back to the farm? Can you imagine Clara on a farm? She’s never known a life without electricity, without ease.” Nucky opened his checkbook and started writing. “I know farms have suffered since the end of the war. This should help either right your family farm or purchase one of your own. There must be some other girl that will take you on, one better suited for the life you were meant to lead.”

The truth of Nucky’s words ate at Richard. He couldn’t imagine Clara in Plover. Maybe this was all just some rich girl’s lark. But still, Clara wasn’t a commodity to be traded.

“Do you think. I’d leave Clara for. Money?” Richard said, his anger rising.

“I certainly hope not,” Clara said from the hallway in a deadly calm voice. “Trying to buy off my husband, Father?”

Richard’s posture was absolutely perfect, his hands were still, and his eye was bright. He’s absolutely furious, Clara thought and was glad he hadn’t believed whatever poison her father was spewing. She moved over to the sofa and put her hand on top of Richard’s and squeezed.

“This is obviously a family discussion. Could you ask your henchman to wait outside?” she asked, not breaking eye contact with her father.

“Will you ask yours to leave,” Nucky asked, gesturing towards Richard.

“Richard is my family,” Clara said pointedly.

Nucky glared at her. “How long is this going to continue, Clara?”

“Assuming we live to be seventy? About forty-five more years.”

“How adorable you’ll be. Three-quarters of your faces will be elderly, and then one-half of his will forever be frozen in time.”

“How lucky for me that I’ll always be able to see the man I fell in love with whenever I look at him, no matter how old we get.”

Nucky shook his head. “I’m supposed to be happy about this, after you snuck around, lied…”

“No. I told you in March that I loved Richard, well before I even told him,” Clara said heatedly. 

“That most certainly never happened…”

“Yes, it did. We were having dinner at Margaret’s and you accused me of being in love with Jimmy and then decided I was in love with Mr. Sleater, although I wasn’t even aware of his existence! That’s when I told you I was in love with Richard.”

“Anyone in their right mind would have thought you were joking!” Nucky yelled, his control slipping for a moment.

“Margaret didn’t think I was joking!” Clara only just stopped herself from telling about the trip to New York.

“It is time you end this delusion!”

Clara stood up, her cheeks flaming. “It’s time I end my delusion! My God, Father, I’ve never known anyone with as little self-awareness as you possess. Has it ever occurred to you that you’ve recreated our family with three substitutes! You don’t think that I see how much Margaret looks like Mother, how she’s smart and clever like Mother? But how much nicer for you that Margaret doesn’t share Mother’s melancholy and terrible habit of miscarrying all over the upholstery. You don’t think I see how Teddy is Jimmy remade? And while the only thing Emily and I share is curly hair, she’s the daughter you’d like to have had, quiet and biddable.”

“How dare you,” Nucky began.

Everyone was distracted by a noise coming from the porch. Richard and Owen both moved quickly as Jimmy came through the door.

“Nucky, I’m glad you are here,” Jimmy said, taking in the obviously tense scene. “You can wait outside,” he said to the man that must be the Irishman Clara and Richard had both complained about. “It’s okay, I used to do your job.”

“You’re the reason I do it now,” Sleater replied, refusing to move.

“It’s fine. And Harrow, I understand you are now apparently Clara’s family, but perhaps I’m still allowed to speak to my daughter and James without your interference?” Nucky said in a voice dripping in sarcasm.

Clara glared but nodded at Richard. In the end, it’s this she thought. Jimmy and I are in a fight with Father and only we can stop it. Well, Uncle Eli as well. Did her father know what was in the letter Willie brought her, that Eli was out of jail and confined to his house?

“You want to make things right with me? Convince Clara to get an annulment,” Nucky said to Jimmy.

Clara and Jimmy looked at each other. Clara took a deep breath. “Father, I’m not getting an annulment. First, I don’t want one. I know you don’t understand, but I love Richard. He loves me. And second, there are no grounds for an annulment.”

“Of course there are grounds, Clara. Luckily you had enough sense not to get married in the Church. A quick civil annulment and it’s like it never happened. It hasn’t happened. This is not a real marriage, Clara...”

“How is it not a real marriage? Because you didn’t arrange it?”

“Must I spell it out for you?”

Jimmy looked between Nucky and Clara, and Clara drew a deep breath. She rather wanted to throw something at her father’s smug face. That, however, would do nothing but make her feel better. 

“Father, I wish for us to be friends. I do not want to quarrel with you. But I’m married to Richard. In every way, and that’s not going to change.”

“You want me to believe that?”

“Would you like the details?” Clara snapped back.

“Jesus, Nuck,” Jimmy said softly. “Please stop before she starts telling us details.”

“I won’t allow my daughter to throw her life away.”

“Won’t allow it? Marrying Darcy would’ve been throwing my life away.”

“Don’t think you’ll get any more money,” Nucky threatened.

“I don’t want any of your money! I just want you to let us fix what is broken between us.”

“Your life will be very different, Clara.”

“Marvelous.”

Nucky turned and looked out the window. “Why, Clara? Out of every damn man on the planet, why him?” 

“Perhaps because I don’t want my children’s relationship with their father to always feel like a chess match played at knifepoint! Maybe because he never makes me feel like I have to earn his love by being the best accordion-playing monkey on the Boardwalk!”

Jimmy sucked air through his teeth, and for a moment Nucky looked like he had been slapped. 

“Children? Will they come out wearing little tin masks with mustaches painted on, or will the masks be part of their layette?”

Jimmy grabbed Clara’s arm and squeezed. She looked at her feet and tried to regain her composure.

“I’m sorry about Angela,” Nucky said to change the subject.

“I’m still looking for Manny Horvitz. He came looking for me, found her instead.”

Manny fucking Horwitz, Nucky thought. Mickey Doyle was a never-ending nightmare, and Doyle offering to broker a meet with Horwitz was yet another complication, but one Nucky couldn’t refuse. That disgusting man, whose vest didn’t even fit properly, calmly talking about how he killed Angela Darmody. Here, in this house, where Clara now slept. Angela, who had nothing to do with James’s business, who was always so grateful for his help, who looked like he had slapped when he ignored her on the Boardwalk back at the start of summer. Women and children were supposed to be sacrosanct. And yet Margaret had been shot at, the d’Alessios had tried to snatch Clara off the street, and Angela was murdered. 

But Nucky knew he was going to make a deal with Manny Horwitz because more than anything Nucky wanted James dead. James, who according to Horwitz, had betrayed him yet again and made a deal behind his back with Waxey Gordon. 

“I haven’t ever heard of him, but I’ll let you know if I hear anything,” Nucky said smoothly

“Jimmy killed his father to save you,” Clara said seriously, trying to swing the conversation back onto the path she and Jimmy wished to take.

“I should have killed him the moment he suggested betraying you. I thought about it, you know since I was a kid. Killing him. I don’t know what stopped me.”

“He was your father, James, nothing looms larger,” Nucky responded, staring at Clara and James and trying not to see them as children. 

“He told me I was a good son. Knocked the wind out of me,” Jimmy said, lighting a cigarette, unable to meet Nucky’s gaze.

You were the one Jimmy needed to tell him, Clara thought furiously. The Commodore was his father by a horrid biological trick. You raised him. As far as that goes, I wouldn’t have minded hearing I was a good daughter. 

“I know there’s nothing I can say, Nuck. But maybe there’s something I can do.”

“How about telling the truth?” Nucky said furiously.

“I was angry.”

“About what?” Nucky asked.

Perhaps the fact you prostituted his twelve-year-old mother out to an elderly man and he’s the result of that rape? Clara thought. It’s why I can’t hate Gillian fully, as much as I want too. 

“Who I was. Who you are. What I went through. Over there.” Jimmy passed Clara his cigarette and lit another. He saw the tension on her face. She gave him a tiny nod.

“The shooting, I never meant for that to happen, Nuck.”

“Then why did it?” Nucky asked, unable to keep the emotion out of his voice. How could you, James, Nucky thought. I did care for you as I did for Clara, I couldn’t wait to see all your promise fulfilled. Look at the two of you standing here, even now you make more sense together than James ever did with poor Angela or Clara does with Harrow. If you two had let yourselves grow up you would be a formidable couple. Clara could smooth over James’s rough edges like Mabel smoothed over his. And how could you, Clara. He tried to kill me and here you are in his house.

Neither answered him.

“You said you wanted to talk and suddenly you two have nothing to say.”

“It was Eli,” James said.

“It was Gillian,” Clara said at the same time. 

They glared at each other, and Nucky almost laughed at the ridiculousness. 

“Let me make things right. Or as right as they can be,” Jimmy said earnestly, and Clara nodded along.

“Perhaps you should go check on Tommy,” Nucky said to Clara.

Clara made eye contact with Jimmy and left the room. 

Jimmy grinned a little. Only Clara could boss him around silently. Time for him to help her, he thought. “Richard loves her, Nuck. She’s important to him. All the things that drive us crazy about her, he likes. And she loves him.” Jimmy took a long drag off his cigarette. “Clara doesn’t talk to people, you know? She makes polite conversation. Even people like Rebecca Spencer, Clara’s known her since we were kids and Rebecca thinks Clara is her friend. But Clara’s never really talked to her, not really. But from that first day with Richard, she really talked to him. She even told him about Mabel. I know it looks unusual, but they are good together. You should see ‘em with Tommy. Jesus, Nuck, you can just see them moving to some small city, having a batch of kids, and Clara terrorizing the city council.”

Nucky lit a cigarette. James’s impassioned speech bit at him. Was he right? Somehow, did Harrow fit with Clara? No, it was nonsense. Nonsense just like everything else James had thought since he enlisted. But he could pretend, Nucky thought. Just like he was going to pretend forgiveness was at hand and get James to start cleaning up the mess he made.

“There is something you can do for me,” Nucky said, willing to use anyone and say anything to save himself.

Nucky was silent as Owen drove them to the house. Fuck he missed the Ritz. He’d enjoy sitting in his office, listening to the Boardwalk from a distance, no one in the suite but Eddie bringing him drinks and Clara off in her room, up to God knows what. Perhaps he shouldn’t have left it to God and kept a closer watch himself, he thought. As they drove he realized he wouldn’t even get to enjoy watching the chaos of the strike. James’s gambit with Chalky White had worked. The strike was over. Thank god James was lost in a haze of stupidity, self-incrimination, and grief, Nucky realized. Because the boy was holding a winning hand, he was just too foolish to realize it.

The house was quiet when they arrived, and Nucky went looking for Margaret. His plan needed Jimmy, but it largely hinged on Margaret. If she didn’t agree to marry him she could be compelled to testify, and he knew her towering Catholic guilt would drive her to confess not only all that she knew but all that she thought she knew. She was sitting knitting in the basement kitchen, trying to escape the heat in front of the new fans he’d put on every flat surface in the house.

He scripted his words carefully. About faith. About religion. About how he fulfilled his duty to God by caring, protecting, and providing for his family. He acknowledged the pain she was in, and how they could still work through it. He told her how much he adored her. Adored their family. That everything he loved was within the walls of their house.

“I’ve done bad things, horrible things, but I convinced myself they were justified. I can see how wrong that was. God or no God. No one is sorrier than I am. I’m afraid, Margaret, I don’t want to die or spend the rest of my life in jail. I’d never admit that to anyone but you.”

The tea kettle whistled, and Margaret walked to the range. “What of Clara?”

“I’ve lost her forever.”

Your choice, Margaret thought. “Because she married Mr. Harrow? Daughters have made worse marriages.”

“But she could have made better and at a better time,” Nucky said, watching her make tea.

“You are always surprising,” she told him and walked upstairs without the tea. Everyone he loves is within this house, she thought, but what of your first two children on the outside whom you shed so easily? When do you shed us?

  
Back at the beach house, Jimmy made a point to come out and eat dinner with Tommy when Nucky left. Tommy was angry about being sent upstairs, but the rare treat of eating with his father calmed his nerves. Clara arranged the chairs in the kitchen so she could eat with Richard while still giving him privacy. Dinner was indeed much better than anything she was capable of making. 

“I’m sorry about my father,” Clara said finally.

“He just. Loves you and wants. What’s best for you,” Richard said, and Clara heard the click in his throat, which meant he was upset.

“No, he doesn’t. He wants what he thinks is best for me, which is rather a different thing. What’s best for me is you, and leaving Atlantic City behind us.” Before it destroys us, she thought.

“Richard, can I borrow Clara?” Jimmy asked when dinner was over.

“I’ll put. Tommy to bed.”

They walked outside and he lit a cigarette. Sitting on the beach, they passed it back and forth silently. It almost feels like high school, Clara thought.

“I thought Nuck was going to keep pushing you until you started sharing details,” Jimmy said drily.

Clara laughed. “I’m perplexed why he thinks a facial injury means we can’t, you know...”

Jimmy snorted. “He should try living with you.” Even in the dark, he could see Clara blush. “It’s not that bad. I just didn’t know Richard’s name had so many syllables in it,” he teased.

“Dear God,” Clara said, wondering if she should fashion a gag out of a scarf.

“You and Nuck’ll get through this. He’ll get used to the idea, you’ll have a baby, he won’t be able to resist the siren call of a grandchild.”

Clara didn’t answer.

“Leander Whitlock asked, are you happy about the money?” Jimmy asked.

Clara looked puzzled. “I received payment for the _Bobbsey Twins_ book, is that what he means?”

Jimmy shrugged. “I didn’t have time to ask, because of Ma. But I don’t think he meant your book. Looks like I’ll eventually get the Commodore’s estate, though. I made a deal with Ma, that if she leaves Tommy alone I’ll let her live at the house. It'll be a minute before all the money is free, though.”

They smoked in silence for a little longer.

“Nuck has a plan,” Jimmy said finally. “It’s the only way, Clara.”

“I don’t think I’m going to like this much,” Clara answered, anxiety making her stomach clench.

“It’s not as bad as it could be. He has to get Margaret to marry him, and Neary's gotta rescind his accusations against Nuck and cast the blame for the election interference on Eli.”

“Uncle Eli?” Clara asked. “He has eight children, but he’s going to take the fall?”

“That’s between Eli and Nucky.”

Clara bristled. No, she thought, it was wrong. She thought back over Jimmy’s words.

“How are you going to convince Alderman Neary?” she asked, already afraid of the answer.

“Acting Treasurer Neary,” Jimmy said. He couldn’t look at Clara. Neary was far from the worst. He’d been sympathetic over Angela. He’d been kind to Jimmy back when Jimmy was just a kid following Nucky around. “It’s going to be his suicide note, Clara.”

“We’ve known him our whole lives, Jimmy,” Clara breathed out.

“Would you rather Nuck go to the chair?” 

Jimmy reached for the cigarette. 

“Light another,” she said. 

* * *

It was a blistering hot morning in Atlantic City. Across the city, people carried on with their lives. In one mansion, the children had been awakened, dressed, and fed by their new nanny. The man the boy still thought of as their new father took them to the side yard to work with the little girl, who was still trying to become accustomed to her leg braces, still trying to relearn to walk on legs she could no longer quite feel.

The cheers of the boy and the man as they encouraged her drifted up to the open windows of the master bedroom, where the mistress of the house slept. Margaret Schroeder walked to the window in her nightgown and regarded the scene unnoticed. Nucky was good with them, she thought. He was good with them when he tried, but that was more than most men were capable of, as she knew all too well. Yesterday he had told her he loved her and the children and asked her to marry him. But not out of love, but because he needed her to save him from the electric chair. He needed her to save him from the consequences of ordering the murder of her husband, of her children’s natural father. She had said no.

She was reconsidering. How could she take them away from this life, she wondered. Emily would always have medical bills. Her children had known what was like to be hungry, to be cold, to go without. They knew what it was like to fear their father coming home. Whatever Nucky’s faults, and there were many, the children never feared him. Did Clara, did Jimmy a voice whispered in her head, but she pushed the thought away. Clara and Jimmy were adults who had been caught up in a war and were spoiled and rebellious. Even if Nucky’s relationship with Teddy and Emily soured, that would be in the future. First, they’d have years of...this. Years of plenty. Years of being a wealthy, respected family. 

But the only way for them to keep what they had, these riches she had traded her body for, was for her to take a final step. Confess her sins. All of them. For a moment she could feel Owen’s hand tracing up her thigh, the feel of his chest hair rubbing against her bosom. That too was a sin. That too she would have to give up. She closed her eyes against the image of Owen’s body over hers, the feelings only he had ever wrung from her. What went on between her and Nucky was different. But this was the step she must make, she told herself. To save Nucky. To save their financial stability. To ensure her children’s futures.

Margaret chose her dress with care and stepped into the bath.

Across town, in a house by the beach, another young woman attended to her newfound domestic responsibilities. She also awakened to the sound of the man she loved caring for the child in their keeping. Richard had slid out of bed, gotten Tommy dressed, and was feeding him breakfast by the time she made it downstairs. Jimmy was also eating breakfast with the boy, and the fact he was up and dressed so early twisted her heart. Even before he shot her a meaningful look, even before Richard barely kissed her goodbye, she knew what they would do when they left. The cost of what they were trying to do was staggering, but she didn’t see another way out. The cost of failure would crush them all. 

“Clara, can we swim?” Tommy asked her.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to focus. “This afternoon, absolutely. But we have errands to run this morning.”

“The library?” the boy asked hopefully.

“Of course,” she answered. “We both need to exchange our books.”

First, though she had other tasks to accomplish, like calling in the lists to the grocer and the greengrocer so they could get deliveries today. Most importantly, though, she’d finished the last pass of her manuscript last night, so she packed it up, piled Tommy and their books into the car, and drove to the post office to mail _Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence_ to the Stratemeyer Syndicate office in Manhattan. That done, she and Tommy headed to the Carnegie library.

As Clara and Tommy approached the library on Pacific Avenue, a Model T, much like Richard and Clara’s, much like Jimmy’s, much like so many other Model Ts on the road, parked in the driveway of a neighboring house to the Darmody beach house. The occupants of the car knew that the neighbors were out of town for the week. The occupants of the car set their sights on the beach house.

Richard and Jimmy ran through the plan one more time as they staked out City Hall.

Nucky looked at his watch. The children were playing a game at the table. How many more times would he be able to lookover and see the children, he wondered.

Margaret walked out wearing a white lace dress, more suitable for a garden party than a morning at home.

“Tell Mr. Sleater to bring the car,” she directed. “We are going to church. I’m going to make a full confession...”

Nucky looked up sharply, “Margaret, we’ve been through this. You can not…”

“I’m going to make a full confession and be absolved of my sins. And then Father Brennan is going to marry us.”

He was saved, he thought. Once married she couldn’t testify against him. James was taking care of Neery. The prosecutor’s case was about to implode right in her plain little face.

“Thank you,” he said simply before heading upstairs to change.

Another Ford, one with a gouge on the side, pulled up in front of City Hall. The driver parked the car carefully. Close to the main entrance, but parked so as to not draw attention. One man moved with a distinctive limp, the other carefully arranged his jacket to disguise what was in his holster and his waistband. They both strode down the hallway with purpose.

The secretary wasn’t at her desk outside the interim City Treasurer’s office, so no one stopped them from busting straight in. They found the secretary bent over the desk with the Alderman with his pants down behind her pumping away.

“Go take a coffee break, don’t come back,” Jimmy instructed the secretary, who in her hurry to get away from the left her bloomers laying under Neery’s desk.

“What the hell?” Neery asked as he attempted to pull his pants back up.

“Nucky sent us,” Jimmy answered. “We’ve all made some mistakes this year. It’s time to correct them.”

Margaret confessed all of her sins. There were so many, she thought. No wonder God struck at her through Emily. She was now atoning, she thought. She was offering up her love and desire for Owen, the only man she’d truly desired since she was sixteen years old, so she could properly provide for children. Even if God couldn’t understand, the Blessed Mother would surely intervene on behalf of a mother willing to do anything to care for her children, to make up for the chaos and pain of their earliest years.

Clara kneeled on the floor of the library and tried to focus on helping Tommy choose picture books. He’s four, she thought, it’s time I start teaching him his letters. Mother had Jimmy and I reading when we weren’t much older. She found a book entitled _My ABC Book of Ships_ that intrigued Tommy with its cover. That will be a good start, she thought. Tommy looked at it while she chose her own books.

“You don’t have to do this,” Owen whispered to Margaret as she stood in the vestibule of the church, waiting on Father Brennan to finish preparing for the ceremony. Nucky was on the phone with a local judge, getting an emergency marriage license.

“But I do,” Margaret answered and steeled herself as she walked into the sanctuary and prepared to become Mrs. Enoch Thompson.

When they arrived home the grocery order was sitting on the porch..

“Did you get Oreos?” Tommy asked.

“Of course I did! Go upstairs, take your shoes off, put your books away, wash your hands, and then come down for lunch.”

It was so hot that after dragging the groceries in she poured a glass of lemonade and drank half of it before she did anything else. She washed her own hands, took out two plates, cut four pieces of bread off the fresh loaf, and took the ham and mustard from the ice box. She pulled the tin of Saratoga Chips from the delivery box and put some on each plate. 

Father Brennan began the marriage service. Both participants stared straight ahead. Nucky couldn’t help but think of Mabel. He had been so nervous, so excited. Wanting Mabel had been a part of soul since he was thirteen. Standing there, watching her come down the aisle, it had felt like a dream. Like he couldn’t possibly be so lucky that he was going to actually get to marry her. He smiled at Margaret. He knew he was lucky she was marrying him, but for different reasons. She was saving him from prison, from the chair. And he wasn’t a young man any longer. His own daughter was married. 

Clara, married. He’d always assumed her wedding would be here, with an archbishop officiating, with Clara in some frothy white gown ordered from Worth in Paris. He would give her away and think of the little girl with skinned knees who always ate the toast off his plate. Instead, she’d ran off the Elkton like common trash with someone she should have never even noticed. Did it without consulting him or his timetable. As per usual, she destroyed his plans with nary a concern. 

Margaret was promising to obey. Any woman in his life obeying would be a welcome change.

The man in the backseat of the Model T drummed his fingers against his knee. He could delay no longer. Clara and the boy had walked into the house ten minutes ago. Time for the boy to be settled with some little kid nonsense and hopefully stay out of their way. He hadn’t decided what he’d do if the boy interfered. He hoped he wouldn’t have to decide.

“Let’s go,” he told the other men and they rolled the car closer to the beach house

Acting Treasurer Neary was trapped between Richard, who stood behind him with a Glock pressed against the back of his head, and Jimmy, who leaned against the desk and dictated exactly what the letter should say. The man pecked out the letter on a portable typewriter much like Clara’s. Finally it was finished. Neery handed it to Jimmy to read over, and Jimmy nodded and handed it back for Neery to sign. The letter was word for word exactly what Nucky had asked for. 

“What good is a confession signed at gunpoint?” Neery asked, weary of dealing with Jimmy, weary of it all. He was ready for Nucky to be dealt with, and then they’d overthrow Prince James here. 

Jimmy pushed Neery so that the office chair tilted back. “It’s not a confession,” he said, holding the man in place.

Richard moved quickly. “It’s a suicide note.” The gun was in Neery’s mouth almost before he realized what was happening.

Clara was cutting Tommy’s sandwich into quarters when she heard the knock at the door. The greengrocer, she thought. Good, they could have something cold for dinner tonight. Upstairs, she heard Tommy banging around and singing the odd version of “Over There” Jimmy sometimes sang. Luckily, Tommy was skipping the more off color words.

When she saw a familiar face through the sidelight glass she smiled. “What are you doing here?” she asked as she opened the door.

“I now declare you man and wife,” Father Brennan intoned. Owen Sleater looked at his feet while Nucky leaned over and gave Margaret a perfunctory peck on the lips.

Richard and Jimmy moved quickly to the car. As they climbed in, Jimmy said the words Richard had been expecting. “I feel like a steak. Let’s go to the Knife and Fork.”

Tommy was in front of his toy chest, holding the _My ABC Book of Ships_ from the library and trying to find his toy boats so he could look for them in the book. He heard Clara talking, and thought she was calling him for lunch. He picked up his cow and walked into the hallway. He hadn’t yet washed his hands, and he knew Clara would check when he came downstairs. Clara used to be more fun. Now she was always looking at his fingernails and asking about socks. But Clara was talking to a dark haired man who was standing on the porch, not looking up the stairs at him.

Suddenly Clara screamed and it scared Tommy so much he froze where he stood. Something crashed to the floor, and Tommy heard a man’s voice saying bad words. 

“The Game! The Game!” Clara yelled loudly. Tommy was still frozen as Clara’s words turned into wordless screams.

“You little bitch,” a man’s voice yelled.

Tommy remembered the game, and ran into Richard and Clara’s room. He crawled under the bed, holding onto his cow, laying all the way in the back against the wall. He hadn’t sucked his thumb for a very long time, but as Clara’s screams grew more distant and he vaguely heard the sound of a car starting he began again. Clara had said only Richard, Daddy, or her. So he waited and waited and didn’t understand why Clara didn’t come back.

He waited as the ice Clara put into glasses for their lunch melted and the ham left out on the counter grew warm. He waited until the sound of Clara’s screams were just a memory. He tried to be good and quiet, just like she told him the game was played, but the longer Clara was gone the more scared he became. Finally he started crying, and he cried until he fell asleep wedged under the guest room bed of the Darmody beach house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to know who you think took Clara, why, and what's going to happen next!
> 
> (Note: Jimmy took the burlap bags Clara needed for the laundry to make the masks he and Richard wore to attack the KKK.)


	30. What Dreams May Come-August 1921

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The search for Clara.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Clara is being held against her will.

Chapter Thirty: What Dreams May Come August 1921 

_ She was floating. Underneath her she could feel the machinery of a car propelling her forward, but why was she in a car? Who was driving? She tried to move her mouth, to ask who was driving her and why, but her mouth wouldn't cooperate. It felt like it was full of cottonwool. Her eyelids were so heavy she couldn't even open them. There was a hand on a knee. It felt familiar, she thought, but it was not Richard. Jimmy? Whomever it was wanted to comfort her, she thought. She tried to move her hand, thinking she could grab the man's hand, but she couldn't. It felt like she was hugging herself and she couldn't stop. Why couldn't she move her arms? Panic rose in her throat and she felt like she might choke on it. What was happening to her? Was this a dream?  _

_ What happened today? Why did she feel drunk? Her head felt like she'd down a couple of bottles of whiskey. She forced herself to recall the day. She'd gotten up. She'd dressed in a green linen skirt, a peach and green striped blouse, and her leather sandals. She could feel them on her feet. Richard had been distracted, had barely kissed her goodbye, but he had made breakfast and fed Tommy. Then she and Tommy went to the post office and the library. When they came back it was time to feed Tommy again, so she started making sandwiches and... _

Tommy.

_ Oh my god, Tommy was alone. She couldn't think of where Richard and Jimmy were, but they weren't home. She tried desperately to get the man's attention, to try and signal that Tommy was alone and was too little to be left without anyone to watch him. The tiredness pulled her down even as she tried to swim up. _

* * *

His eternal watchfulness meant he saw everything, and he was especially watchful over the house that contained Clara and Tommy. Their Model-T was parked by the service porch. Clara always cheated it over so it was easier to get Tommy out of the passenger side door. He'd have to look to make sure she hadn't let Tommy eat in the car again. Who knew jam could get into so many places? He wondered the day that he cleaned the jam out of the upholstery of their car if Tommy had managed to get any of it into his mouth. A box sat on the service porch. Grocery delivery, but why hadn't Clara brought it in? Well, it was late enough that Tommy should be up from his nap. They were probably on the beach and Clara didn't realize her order had arrived.

It was when his eye trailed up to the front of the house that it felt like his heart stopped beating in his chest. The front door was ajar. Just slightly open. Clara wouldn't leave the door open. She just wouldn't. There were also tire tracks in the grass.

"Jimmy," he growled out while pulling the Glock from his waistband.

Jimmy had indulged in several glasses of bourbon at lunch, and mixed with the disappearing adrenaline from earlier he was left feeling pleasantly numb. Numb was a state he now chased at all times. Richard was already out of the Ford when Jimmy realized the door was open. Tommy, Clara, God please no, he thought, his heart dropping.

Richard feared what he was going to see before he even walked on the porch. Angela laying dead and pale on top of her lover, in the room next to the one where he now slept with Clara. Richard saw it even as his eye swept the house, looking for anything else out of place. He pushed the vision away.

Even in their terror they worked methodically. Each had their gun out, and they kept each other in view as they entered the house and started sweeping the rooms. They both saw the metal plant stand by the front door was turned over, the one that only had survived Jimmy's rage because it couldn't be burned. Nothing was amiss in the sunroom, living room, or dining room but the kitchen made both of their anxiety increase. Clara's purse sat in a kitchen chair. Two glasses of lemonade with melted ice sat on the table, next to a library copy of  _ The Black Moth _ . A box from the grocer was on the counter, half unpacked. Also on the counter were two plates with Saratoga chips and half made ham sandwiches. A platter of ham lay abandoned on the counter. Richard touched it. Warm. Clara had been making lunch when something stopped her, and it had occurred a while ago. Where were they, he thought, and had to start breathing through his mouth because the press of his growing panic made breathing through his nose impossible.

Upstairs, Jimmy went to Tommy's room. Tommy's shoes looked like he had kicked them off in a hurry. A pile of library books sat on his little table, but one was in front of his toy chest and some toys were on the floor. Jimmy didn't see the goofy cow Tommy slept with. Thank god, Jimmy thought, wherever Tommy was he had his cow.

Nothing looked amiss in their bedroom, Richard thought. He forced himself to focus. Was there a simple reason Clara had left the beach house with Tommy in the middle of making lunch, leaving her purse and the car? The sound of the surf banging on the sand outside the windows made his stomach turn. Could Tommy have gotten away from her and gotten into the ocean, and Clara followed? No, he thought, even here on this quiet part of the beach swimmers and beach goers were all over, trying to escape the heat. Someone would have seen. There would still be chaos if that had happened.

"Richard?" a little voice called from underneath the bed. "Can I come out now?"

"Tommy!" Richard fell to his knees at the same time as a chubby little hand reached out from under the bed. Pulling Tommy out he checked the boy instinctively. Tommy looked physically fine, but Richard didn't miss the bright red eyes and dried mess on his face. Without thinking he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and tried to wipe Tommy's face, but the boy clung to him so fiercely that it was difficult to get to his face.

"Jimmy!" Richard growled out.

"She didn't come back," Tommy said, crying. "She yelled Game but she never came back." Tommy sobbed out the rest of the story.

Jimmy walked into the room. Tommy was clinging to Richard and crying.

"Clara was downstairs. Mmm. Tommy was supposed to wash his hands. He heard her open the door. Mmm. Then she screamed for him. To play the game. And was screaming. When someone took her away."

Jimmy wanted to look away from the horror on Richard's face.

Someone snatched Clara right from this house. Someone did something to make her scream while they took her. Jimmy wanted to run to his room and take every paper packet of heroin he had hidden. He wanted to crawl down a bottle of bourbon and never emerge.

Angela was dead. Manny fucking Horvitz had just come into this house, his house, and killed Angela. Angela who never hurt anyone on purpose in her life. And now someone had just snatched Clara while she made Tommy's lunch. Clara, who was only here because he hadn't been capable of keeping Angela alive.

Tommy's chubby little arms were wrapped tightly around Richard's neck, his face buried in his shoulder, his little sobs filling the room. Jesus, thank god Clara had taught Tommy to hide.

He looked at Richard's face again, and for the first time in a long time the self-loathing and longing for death was replaced with rage. Why the fuck did these goddamn people think they had the right to come into his house and kill his wife, snatch his sister, terrorize his child?

A knock sounded on the door below, and then they heard a female voice with a British accent call, "Hello, Clara? Are you home? The door is open?"

Jimmy and Richard looked at each other. Unbeknownst to each other, they were having the same thought. They each recognized that voice.

Pulling out his Glock, Jimmy crept to the landing, leaving Richard barricaded with Tommy. A young woman wearing a lavender dress covered in white embroidery with a white merry widow hat stood in the foyer, looking uncertain. The edges of her dark brown bob peeped out from underneath the brim of the hat.

The woman looked up at the stairs when Jimmy moved. When he saw her face it removed all doubt from his mind.

"Rose Grenville?"

* * *

_ Someone was picking her up. She couldn't use her arms to steady herself-why? Why were her arms trapped against her body? The sun was warm on her face, but she still couldn't force her eyes to open. Her head lolled on the man's shoulder and for a moment she thought she was back at her mother's funeral, that she was a little girl who started crying when her mother's coffin went down the aisle toward the hearse. Jimmy's sweaty hand was in hers, but someone else picked her up. Daddy? Why couldn't she remember? _

_ Now she was inside a building. Even with her eyes closed she knew it was large and very clean. The Ritz? Was someone taking her home? Home would be nice. She longed for the thick, clean sheets on her bed by the windows that always let in a sea breeze. Maybe Jimmy and Richard would be in the suite and she wouldn't have to be alone... _

_ No, she didn't live at the Ritz. She lived in Angela and Jimmy's guest room with Richard. Now she fell asleep entwined with Richard while the sea beat outside their window. So where was she? Wherever it was they were the cleaning staff was a little over enthusiastic in their use of bleach. It smelled like Margaret's house when she cleaned it after Emily's polio diagnosis. _

_ Suddenly she was deposited on a hard surface with some sort of scratchy linen covering it. _

_ The click of heels on a hard floor. A woman, Clara thought. Good. _

_ "This is Clara Thompson?" _

_ Clara didn't understand why this woman knew her name, but then she realized it wasn't right. Why? Once more she tried to move her hands, and when she did her little finger caught against the diamond on the side of her engagement ring. _

_ I'm married, she thought. For a horrible moment Darcy's face swam up in her memory and terror clutched at her. Had she married Darcy? _

_ No, no of course not. Darcy was long gone. She could see Richard as they stood in front of the minister at that ridiculous little chapel. Relief flooded her. It was Richard. She'd married Richard.  _

_ She tried to force her mouth open. She tried to speak. Pushing her tongue on the roof of her mouth she finally felt her cheeks. _

_ "Clara Harrow," she said as best she could. _

_ "Is she trying to say something?" _

_ "Clara. Harrow," she repeated. _

* * *

"Well, Rose Malley now but Clara still calls me Rose Grenville. It's quite alright, though, since I'm fairly certain I'll think of her as Clara Thompson when we are little old ladies who've been married for decades! How are you, Jimmy? I was so dreadfully sorry to hear about your wife. I never had the chance to meet her, but we wrote a few times and I know how Clara adored her. Is Clara here?"

Fuck, Jimmy thought. For one wild moment he thought Rose was going to tell him Clara was with her, that this was all just a misunderstanding.

"Richard! You can bring Tommy down," Jimmy said, and moved around Rose to close and bolt the front door.

Richard moved slowly and heavily down the stairs since Tommy was still attached to him.

As Richard came into view Rose Malley, probably for the first time in her life, rudely stared.

Jesus Christ, she was a fucking battlefield nurse, Jimmy thought when he noticed. And there was no chance that Clara had not talked about Richard's injury when she saw Rose in May. Why the hell was she staring at Richard like that?

"Richard, this is Clara's friend Lady Rose Malley."

"Is Clara. Mmm. With you?" Richard asked, hope rising in his chest that somehow, somehow Clara was safe.

"No," Rose breathed out. "Why? Where's Clara?"

Jimmy and Richard looked at each other.

"The man took her!" Tommy said from Richard's shoulder.

"Jimmy?" Rose asked.

"We don't know. We just know someone has her."

Rose fought to maintain her composure. She started to speak, but then glanced over at Tommy. "She's in danger? But you are going to find her?"

Jimmy and Richard looked at each other.

"Who will care for your son?" Rose asked. "Because from Clara's letters I know she's upended her life because she doesn't think you have any reliable alternatives."

Fuck, Jimmy thought. He and Richard could hardly put Tommy in the back of the Ford while they searched for Clara. If, when he corrected himself, they found Clara she'd kill him if he left Tommy with Gillian.

"Let me take him. My sister Dorothy and I are visiting a Great-Aunt who lives on Cape May. I'm here because we hoped to convince Clara to bring Tommy and join us for a few days. My grandmother is there, and she's very much looking forward to meeting Tommy. Clara was going to bring him and your wife to Newport, when..."

When Angela was murdered, Jimmy thought. He should have insisted Clara take Tommy then and get out of town until everything was over. But this would keep Tommy safe. No one would look for Tommy ensconced in some rich old lady's estate.

Rose approached Richard and Tommy. "Tommy, would you like to spend a few days with me? I promise we will have ever so much fun. There's a lovely boat so we can go out to sea."

Richard felt her staring at the scar on his throat as she spoke to Tommy, and even in his current state of terror it made him uncomfortable.

"Do you know about mermaids?" Tommy asked.

Rose thought for a moment, and then realized. "Clara's stories about the mermaids? Of course. She's been telling them to me since we were girls in school together. I always liked the sister who built a house out of oyster shells."

Jimmy went upstairs to pack for Tommy.

"Your throat and voice, that wasn't caused by the initial injury, was it?" Rose asked gently. She knew it wasn't the time, but she had to know. Clara had said something about Richard's voice, but Rose hadn't thought, not really, but now what she was thinking...

Richard looked down at his hands. "No. Mmm. Trying to save me on the field. They performed..."

"An emergency tracheotomy," Rose finished. "And they damaged your vocal cords accidentally?"

Richard nodded. "Yes, Lady Malley."

"Please, here in America I'm simply Mrs. Malley. No one has time for the other nonsense. But you are the husband of my dearest friend, you must call me Rose." Rose hesitated, and then reached out and put her hand over his. "My father calls Clara the Fierce Little American. She'll be fine."

Something about Rose Malley's hand on his felt...familiar, he thought, but in his haze of terror he thought it was just her similarity to Clara in dress and manner.

Clara had to be fine, Rose thought. It would be altogether too cruel if after everything she only had a fortnight with her husband. The poor man had been through enough; he couldn't be a widower in his mid-twenties.

Jimmy took Rose and Tommy to the train station while Richard prepared for what was next. He pulled his gun bag from the back of the armoire in their room and started checking and loading his weapons. Done before Jimmy returned, his mind flooded with the nightmare he'd had since the fall day when the d'Alessios had tried to snatch Clara off the street in front of the Ritz.

That one day Clara would scream for him and he wouldn't be there to hear it.

He had to do something. He pulled the small notebook from his pocket and thought about where to start. Finally he made a decision.

"BARclay 5786" answered a voice that wordlessly declared I'm busy, important, and have little time for your foolishness .

"Meyer Lansky?" Richard managed to say.

Meyer ashed his cigarette, and looked over in the gambling room where Charlie stood. "Richard Harrow?"

"Someone. Took Clara. From Jimmy's house. It was. Violent," Richard barely managed to whisper the words. Saying them made it horrifyingly real.

Meyer waved towards Benny, who tapped Charlie on the shoulder.

"Who has her?" Meyer asked.

"I. Don't know. Maybe the butcher. Mmm. But it could be..."

Anyone who is either angry at Darmody or angry at Thompson, Meyer thought. There was a long list of people who might consider Clara's life as forfeit due to their actions.

"Why are you calling instead of Darmody or Thompson?"

"She's my. Wife," Richard answered.

Meyer blinked but didn't say anything. "Charlie and I will see what we can find out."

"What the fuck, Meyer? I was right in the middle of fleecing a real numbskull."

Meyer drummed his fingers against the desk thoughtfully. "I just learned two very interesting pieces of information. Someone kidnapped Clara Thompson from Darmody's house. And Clara Thompson is now Clara Harrow."

"She married him, huh?" Charlie lit a cigarette. "Who the fuck do you think Darmody or Thompson pissed off enough to go after her?"

"It's quite the list. We should see what we can find out."

Good, Charlie thought. Clara was a bitch, but he had to like any classy broad who could curse him in Italian. "Sure."

"Could be valuable information to a lot of people. Besides, if I were Harrow, I'd be going out of my mind right now," Meyer said, flicking his cigarette and sneaking a look at Charlie. If it were Charlie missing, the body count would rise across the Eastern Seaboard. He felt like Harrow was about to leave quite the bloody trail in his wake.

"Perhaps we should think about how to approach AR with this news." He thought for a moment. "Both pieces of news."

Back in Atlantic City Richard prepared for another call.

Capone answered the phone, and for once Richard was glad.

"It's Richard. Harrow. Mmm. Someone took. Clara from Jimmy's."

Fuck, Capone thought. "What about Jimmy's kid?"

"She yelled. For Tommy. To hide," Richard answered. "Have you. Heard anything?"

"I'll ask around. Me and Torrio, we'll see what we can find out," Al promised. He didn't fucking like Clara Frankenstein, but he really didn't fucking like this new idea that families were available for the taking. Jimmy Irish's wife was already dead, and now Clara had been taken from his house while she watched his kid? Fuck that. Al didn't even let himself imagine if it were Mae, or Malfalda, or God forbid Sonny taken from their home.

He'd burn all of Chicago down. Torrio wasn't there for Al to tell him, but Capone started thinking about who was going to get some questions asked of them.

Richard was standing in the hall. As soon as he heard Jimmy's car he went outside with his bag.

"You know. Where we have to. Go first," Richard said.

Jimmy swallowed, and nodded. He wasn't looking forward to it.

* * *

_ Red wine. Angela loved it, Clara drank it happily and paid for it later. Ah, though, to have had so much Angela was having to take her shoes off for her. How embarrassing. Now hands were unbuttoning the back of her blouse. Had she gotten sick? The blouse was pulled over her head. _

_ Madame Jenet mocked her white bra and tap pants. She already knew she wanted Richard to touch her, to desire her, so she went to Blatt's for more sophisticated things and couldn't decide what to buy. Gillian was there, and whipped things on and off her body, like this. Clara hated it. _

_ Does he like tawdry Gillian asked. _

_ No, Clara thought. Richard doesn't like tawdry. It's why he doesn't understand our love of the Boardwalk. She was wearing the green step-in she bought that day, but the straps were being pushed from her shoulders. Was the lace torn again? Richard had accidentally ripped the lace one night, back at his place, when they could be loud (well, she could be loud) and not have to worry about putting pajamas on in case Tommy had a nightmare. _

_ Wait, why was Tommy having nightmares? It felt like she was on a carousel, bits of her life flashing by like they were people standing in a crowd around the machine. Angela was dead, Clara thought, and a wave of pain slammed into her. Angela, dead.  _

_ "You gotta help me tell him," Jimmy had said and so they sat on the sofa and explained gently because Gillian was going to tell him Angela was in Paris and Gillian was his mother and Jimmy was his father and no, Clara thought, no they would not play games with Tommy's sanity. And so they told him and he cried and ran out the beach door but it was okay because Richard was there and instead of picking him up he had knelt down and showed Tommy a shell and that's what they did that afternoon while Jimmy had grabbed a bottle and cried in the living room and Clara felt like she was going to shatter. _

_ "At least this one doesn't have lice," a woman's voice said. Who is that Clara thought, and tried to open her eyes but her mind still didn't seem capable of making her body cooperate with its wishes. _

_ "Came around a little earlier, said her name was Harrow," another voice answered. _

_ Yes, that's right. Clara Thompson Harrow, she thought. I ordered stationery. _

_ "Delusional, is she?" _

_ No, Clara thought. I'm not delusional, but I don't know why I'm so tired... _

* * *

It was contrary to his nature, but Jimmy hung back. Clara was Richard's wife, he thought, he had to let Richard take the lead. Richard knocked loudly on the door, and they both saw the maid skittle away when she saw their face and Sleater come down the stairs.

"You can't be here," Sleater began.

"Clara's been. Kidnapped," Richard answered.

"Fuck," Sleater replied. "Come in, I'll get Mr. Thompson."

Nucky was closeted with his attorney Bill Fallon, preparing for the first day of trial.

"Mr. Thompson, Harrow and Darmody need to see you."

"Absolutely not," Nucky snapped.

"Someone's taken Clara," Owen answered, and to him it looked like Mr. Thompson aged ten years in that moment. He motioned for the other men to come into the study.

"How?" Nucky asked them.

"She went to the library with Tommy, came home, sent him upstairs to wash up, and started making lunch. Tommy heard a knock on the door and Clara talking to who the fuck ever it was, and then she screamed for Tommy to hide and then she just...screamed. Tommy hid under the bed. We don't know how long she'd been gone when we got home," Jimmy answered.

"And where were you two?"

"Nuck," Jimmy said simply, and cast his eyes at the attorney.

"Please. Help us anyway. You can. I'll do anything you ask," Richard pleaded. Clara, screaming. The Butcher shot Angela point blank, hung his own man from a meat hook and forced Jimmy to slit the man's throat. What could he do to Clara?

Really? Nucky thought. You'd leave Atlantic City, let Clara be? When she gets back, you'd let her return to being Clara Thompson, and you would return to whatever lonely hovel you crawled from?

"She's still my daughter," Nucky snapped. "Of course I'm going to do everything I can."

"We're gonna find her," Jimmy said, with a confidence he wished he felt.

* * *

_ Where was her kimono or pajamas? She didn't dare sleep naked because Tommy could come in at any minute, but she could feel her bare back pressing against the sheets. Gooseflesh was forming on her arms from the cold, and what was Richard doing? That...hurt. _

_ No, not Richard. She felt the bite of metal. It felt like getting measured for her dutch cap. Were Margaret and she back in New York? Did she need a new one? Why couldn't she remember? She tried to lift her arms, but although they were now stretched at her side she still couldn't move them. _

_ "Virgo ruptura, not virgo intacta," a man's voice said from between her knees. Clara tried closing her legs, but they too felt stuck, like she had stepped in cement. "Signs of recent intercourse. Cervix is low and firm, so probably not pregnant. Appears healthy." _

_ What is happening to me, Clara thought. Am I at the doctor's? Am I sick? _

_ With great effort she managed to move her fingers. Her rings were gone. Why would she take off her rings for a doctor's appointment? _

_ Clara managed to make a sound, trying to get anyone's attention, trying to wake up. _

_ "She's waking up," the man's voice said. "Prepare the hypodermic." _

_ No, Clara thought, why am I here, why are you giving me a shot, I do not want this! _

_ Then she felt the pinch as the needle sank into her arm and once more she plunged into darkness. _

* * *

As usual, Mickey Doyle didn’t have enough men guarding the warehouse and the ones who were on duty were used to taking their orders from Richard. The look on Richard’s and Jimmy’s faces didn’t invite questions, and Jimmy and Richard slipped in without Doyle noticing.

The sound of Doyle’s horrid giggle echoed throughout the mostly empty warehouse. At least, Jimmy thought, they were finally almost done with George Remus’s liquor. Richard's focus was almost terrifying. Jimmy doubted that Richard noticed anything that wasn't directly related to his mission.

Doyle never saw them coming. Jimmy covered from the back, while Richard came in from the side like an avenging demon. He slammed Doyle into the wall and pinned him into the place with his forearm.

“Where. Is. My. Wife?” Richard growled out.

Doyle giggled. “Is this a joke?”

Richard moved his arm so it was pressing against Doyle’s throat.

“Hey! Hey! Hey! I didn’t even know you had a wife. Not my problem if you couldn’t keep her.”

“I don’t. Have. Time for this,” Richard said, pushing his arm further into Doyle’s throat.

“And I don’t even know who you are talking about?” Doyle whined.

Jimmy took his time lighting a cigarette. “Clara,” he finally said.

Doyle looked over at Jimmy. “Clara?” he asked, and then realization dawned across his face. “Nucky’s Clara? Princess Clara married Tin Face?”

Richard readjusted his grip and Doyle moaned in pain. “Hey, it ain’t my fault if she came to her senses!”

“Someone. Took. Her from. Jimmy’s house,” Richard had to stop talking for a moment. “She was. Screaming.”

“Thing is, Doyle, I figure the same person who killed my wife in my house probably snatched Clara from my house. And we all know who killed Angela. Your ole pal Munya.”

“Jimmy I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that. Whatever Munya did I didn’t know,” Doyle pleaded.

“Sure,” Jimmy said. “But I know for a fact that you know where he’s holed up.”

Nucky must’ve told him, Doyle reasoned. “If Nucky says it's okay,” he answered.

Jimmy saw Richard’s shoulders tense. He heard it, too. Nuck had acted yesterday like he had no idea who Manny Horvitz was, but now he was in charge of giving Doyle the okay to divulge the fucking Butcher’s location.

It had just been a ploy, Jimmy thought. Nucky had just been playing him. There was no forgiveness. Yesterday, Jimmy had been willing to accept the idea that Nuck just wanted him to clean up his mess and march off to his death, but right now he felt differently.

“Clara is Nuck’s daughter. You don’t think he’s doing everything he can to find out who has her, and doesn’t expect all of us to do the same?” Jimmy said coldly.

“We are. Leaving. To find the Butcher. Now,” Richard said and grabbed Doyle by the back of the shirt. Doyle was silent as Richard threw him into the backseat of the Ford.

* * *

_ It was cold, but Mommy had agreed to take them looking for shells. The wind whipped across her face, but Clara didn’t care. She and Jimmy put their pail in their sand and dug through the shells. _

_ Gillian was there. Clara ran up to hug her, but Gillian carefully stepped away from Clara’s hug and Jimmy’s, although she leaned down and kissed Jimmy’s mouth. No sand on my coat, she’d cried, avoiding Jimmy’s and Clara’s hands. _

_ Jimmy had fallen and cut his hands on the shells. Mommy was pulling the shell pieces out of his hand, but Clara kept looking for shells. _

_ She saw the shell she wanted and got a little closer to the water’s edge than Mommy said was okay. Leaning forward the shell was almost in her grasp when the wave knocked her off her feet. The water was so cold her muscles froze, and her coat was so heavy she couldn’t turn herself back upright. _

_ Mommy and Jimmy were so close but didn't see her struggling to keep her head up. Jimmy finally looked up and saw her and whispered to Mommy, who ran and scooped her up. Even then the cold was bad Clara couldn’t feel her body and her teeth chattered so hard she bit her tongue. _

_ It was that taste that brought her back. The iron taste of blood filled her mouth. Her body was still in the water, though, and was so cold all her muscles were cramping. Why was it dark? What was biting her neck? She could move her arms and legs, but only so far and then they banged into some sort of hard fabric. _

_ It was so terribly cold, Clara thought. Where was Mommy? _

_ No, hold it together, she told herself and felt the edges of panic setting in. Mother has been dead almost fifteen years. You aren’t a little girl on the beach. _

_ Think. _

_ She could move her arms and legs. It felt like she was in a bathtub, almost. The fear hit her like a rogue wave. What was happening? Everything, since she stepped out of the kitchen to answer the door, was a mess in her mind, like tangled ribbons, but fear threaded through all of it. _

_ The water was so cold it hurt. Clara heard footsteps and saw a slice of light as a door opened behind her. _

_ “Hello?” She croaked out. “Please, please someone tell me what’s happening!” _

_ The person, Clara thought it was a woman, didn’t speak. She bent down and suddenly the cold water was circling the drain. _

_ “Why am I in a bathtub? Where’s Richard? Does anyone know that Tommy is alone?” Warm water, almost a little too warm, began to fill the tub. “He’s just a little boy, and his mother just died. He must be so scared.” Her hands banged against the canvas cover. _

_ It was a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. The woman never spoke. “Does my husband know I’m here? His name is Richard Harrow. We are living with my foster-brother, James Darmody, at his house on Ventor. My father is Nucky Thompson, he’s the former treasurer of Atlantic County. You could contact any of them. Please, tell me where I am? Why are you doing this to me?” _

_ The water turned off and the woman walked away. _

_ “No, please!” Clara pleaded. “Please don’t leave me!” _

_ “I’ll tell them you are agitated,” the woman said and closed the door behind her. _

_ Although she fought to stay awake, the warm water soon pulled her back down into unconsciousness. As the fog descended Clara tried to determine why she was so tired, why her head felt so heavy. _

_ Soon she realized she was locked into a nightmare cycle. The warm water was left for a while, and then the woman would silently return and fill the tub with ice-cold water, which would shock Clara back awake. _

_ During those times she tried to determine what was going on, she pleaded with the woman to help her. Her neck was raw from the canvas collar, her knees and hands were bruised from pushing on the canvas cover, and her tailbone ached from sitting on the enamel tub. And that was nothing compared to the pain and misery of the cold water. Even when the water was warm Clara was tense waiting on the inevitable cold. Her teeth would chatter so hard her tongue and cheeks were quickly covered in bite marks, her nipples hardened to the point of pain, and her muscles contracted terribly. _

_ When the woman came in to fill the tub with cold water Clara had formed a plan. “Please, if you don’t want to contact my family, contact my attorney, Leander Whitlock. He lives at 101 South Montgomery Avenue in Atlantic City. He’ll help you get out of this, he will negotiate my release. Jimmy will pay. My father will pay. Please.” _

_ The woman didn’t say anything, and when the cold water hit her Clara couldn’t hold back a cry of pain. _

* * *

It wasn’t Jimmy making Doyle nervous. Tin face stared at him with zero expression, the gun pressed against his side. Had Nucky’s spoiled princess really married this thing? Damn, rich girls did weird things but this took the cake.

“So what did Nucky say when you asked for his fair daughter’s hand, hmm?” Doyle asked, wondering what the hell that must have been like.

“He was thrilled,” Jimmy said before Richard could respond, “because Nuck knows what Richard will do to anyone who even thinks about harming one hair on Clara’s head.”

Doyle got the message.

“You sure this is the place?” Jimmy asked. “We don’t have time for mistakes.”

For once in his life, Doyle decided not to speak and simply nodded his head.

“You got one job, Doyle. Get him to open the door,” Jimmy directed.

Richard and Jimmy carefully observed the entrances to the synagogue before they took their positions and allowed Doyle to approach the basement door.

“Munya! Mmmhaaa!” they heard Doyle say at the door, and slowly it opened.

Richard moved silently behind Doyle, pushing him out of the way so quickly that the drunk, stumbling Horvitz was against a support beam before he knew what was happening.

Jimmy tried to notice details, to control his rage, and keep his focus. The basement was sordid, smelling of body odor and dirty linen, the floor covered with empty whiskey bottles. A far cry, Jimmy thought, from the butcher shop which might’ve smelled of iron from spilled blood but was spotlessly clean.

“The funny man,” Horvitz said with a bleary smile. “Boychik. What brings you to my humble abode?”

“Where. Is. My wife?” Richard growled into his ear.

“Well, the boychik’s wife is by now six feet underground, no?”

“We’ll get to that,” Jimmy said darkly. “Where is Clara? Blonde bob, freckles. Someone snatched her from my house this afternoon.”

“And this blonde shiksa is the funny man’s wife?”

“Your daughter. Is an angel. Your wife. You love her. Even with. Her thick ankles. If we don’t find. Clara. Safe and sound. My face. Will be the last thing. They see,” Richard said, his voice lower and steadier than normal, his gaze never wavering from Horvitz’s.

Horvitz took a deep breath. He had noted the difference between the two young men from Atlantic City the day they first walked into his butcher shop. In his dealings with Harrow and Darmody nothing had changed his opinion. Harrow was a man who lived up to his word. Manny knew his life was at an end; the best he could hope for now was to convince Harrow to spare his wife and daughter. “I had nothing to do with taking your wife, Mr. Harrow. I killed the boychik’s wife, but he failed to heed my warnings. We have no bad blood between us.”

“Mrs. Harrow is Nucky Thompson’s only living kid,” Mickey said from across the room.

“You married Nucky Thompson’s daughter? Mr. Harrow, not only have I no wish to start a fight with you, but I have no desire to make an enemy of Nucky Thompson.”

“You started. A fight. With me when you. Killed Angela Darmody. In her bedroom,” Richard snarled back at him. “Am I. Supposed to believe you. That you had nothing to. Mmm. Do with Clara?”

“Look at how I live. I’m in hiding from you, from boychik, from Waxey Gordon. You think I could make it to Atlantic City, take your wife, and get back here alive? When it’s clear I’m not going to live through the night?”

Richard and Jimmy looked at each other. Jimmy stepped forward. Richard stepped backward and took a gasping breath. He believed now that the butcher had nothing to do with taking Clara.

But that meant he had no idea who would have or why. Now the list grew to everyone they ever came in contact with. Or what if it was someone not connected to them? Richard remembered reading about the Villisca axe murders back in high school. No one knew why someone killed two parents and six children with an axe, or why one of the daughters appeared to have been violated. His heart clutched. What if someone had just seen Clara and wanted her? How could he find her if he didn’t even know where to start looking?

He forced himself back into the moment. Jimmy was ordering Doyle to wrap the chains around the butcher, securing him to the pole while Jimmy slipped his trench knife from his boot.

Jimmy turned and looked back at Richard. Silently they agreed. The butcher had nothing to do with Clara.

Manny Horvitz still had to pay for Angela. For her fear. For her death. For every painting that would never be dreamed into existence. For every night Tommy cried for his mother.

The Butcher was a man who tried to live his life in such a way that his word was his bond. What he said, he did. As a passing headlight sliced through the basement window and gleamed off the metal in the boychik’s hand he promised himself he wouldn’t give Darmody the satisfaction of hearing his screams.

The true measure of a man, however, is taken in his worst moments. And in those moments, the Butcher’s last, James Darmody proved Manny Horvitz was just another man whose greatest lies were to himself.

* * *

It was quite late at night before Legs, whom Charlie couldn’t fucking stand, called and told Meyer that AR would meet with them at 11:30. Meyer insisted they both put on clean shirts before they went to AR’s brownstone.

“Gentleman! What news was so vital that you must come to my house at this late hour?” Rothstein smiled his thanks as his butler set a cold glass of milk and a slice of Devil’s Food Cake before him.

“Thompson’s daughter, Clara, somebody grabbed her from Jimmy Darmody’s house. She’s been watching after his kid,” Charlie said.

“The boy reports that Clara was screaming when taken. She apparently trained the boy to hide, and he did so,” Meyer chimed in.

“Someone snatched Miss Thompson from James Darmody’s house? The house where his wife was killed only a few weeks prior?” Rothstein asked.

“She ain’t exactly Miss Thompson no more. She married Harrow,” Charlie said.

Rothstein tapped his finger on his desktop. “Nucky’s daughter married the point man of his enemy, moved into the enemy’s home to take care of his motherless child, and has now been taken from that very house?”

He thought for a moment, then lifted the telephone receiver, and checked his list of numbers. “Operator, please get me ATLantic 4939 in Atlantic City. Yes, it is an emergency.”

“Thompson residence,” a lilting Irish voice said.

“Mrs. Schroeder, forgive me for the late hour…”

“Mr. Rothstein? I’m sure you wouldn’t call at this time without good reason. Although it’s Mrs. Thompson now.”

Rothstein felt his eyebrows move up his face. “What wonderful news. Best wishes for a happy future. I was calling about the other bride in the family.”

“Yes, Clara married her Mr. Harrow,” Margaret said noncommittally.

“Are there any updates on the new Mrs. Harrow?”

“Well, it isn’t the marriage Nucky would have wished for her, but Clara seems quite content.”

Rothstein looked back at Charlie and Meyer with surprise. The new Mrs. Thompson had no idea her step-daughter was missing. How...unexpected.

“Well, certainly Carolyn and I send our best wishes to the Harrows as well. Is there any chance I could speak with Nucky briefly?”

Margaret paused for a moment. “Of course.”

She walked to Nucky’s study slowly, giving herself time to think. Mr. Rothstein was calling about Clara, but not about her marriage. But something pressing.

“Mr. Rothstein is on the telephone. I believe he wants to talk about Clara,” she told her new husband, carefully watching his face.

“Well, there’s no telling what trouble Clara has caused now,” Nucky said evenly and motioned for Sleater to walk Margaret out of the room.

As soon as Owen closed the door and they walked a step away, Margaret pounced. “Why is Mr. Rothstein calling about Clara?”

Owen looked away. Mr. Thompson’s reaction to the news that his daughter had been taken, taken screaming had been...unexpected. After Harrow and Darmody left Mr. Thompson had directed him to go to the Atlantic City Armory and pick something up. A small envelope from an officer Owen knew was on Mr. Thompson’s payroll.

The envelope was closed but not sealed. Usually Owen would just let it be but it was not a usual day. He had watched Thompson marry the woman he, Owen, well he wasn’t sure he loved Margaret, exactly, but he cared about her. And now Clara kidnapped and Thompson unbothered, all on the eve of Thompson’s trial.

So Owen opened the envelope. He saw what it was, and was confused as to why Thompson had sent him that afternoon to pick them up. Lifting them up he became even more confused.

He was holding a replica of Richard Harrow’s dog tags.

Back in New York Rothstein replaced the receiver on the hook and stared out the window. Nucky Thompson was rather a cold fish and a troublesome business partner, and yet Rothstein would lay a bet any day of the week that Thompson loved his daughter. However, he was completely unconcerned that his daughter was kidnapped. Not just quietly taken, but, according to her new husband, taken screaming from the home of the man she considered her brother.

The same man who had led a rebellion against Thompson’s crown, who had ordered his death. Who had committed treason, and now had married off Thompson’s princess to his own most loyal knight.

Rothstein swiveled back in the chair and regarded his errant pups. The shape of a plan began to form his mind.

“Gentleman, let’s try something we haven’t yet in 1921. Let’s try you being honest with me. About Atlantic City. About James Darmody.”

Charlie shot Meyer a nervous glance.

* * *

_ At some point, Clara forgot about everything except for the horridness of the cold. Even when the cold water was drained and warm water washed over her, her teeth chattered and her mind could only focus on the dread of what would happen when the cold water inevitably came back. There were no windows in the room, no light, no noise. No way for her to mark the time, no way know how long she’d endured it, no way to distract herself. Her skin was cracking which made the assault of the cold water even worse. Everything hurt. And then the door would open again, Clara would be blinded by the quick flash of the light, the woman’s footsteps would echo around the chamber, the water would drain, the warm water would rush in. She would lay in it until her muscles partially unseized, although the cold seemed to have worked down to her bones and now never went away, and then the door would open, she would be blinded by the quick flash of light, the woman’s footsteps would echo around the chamber, the now tepid water would drain, the cold water would rush in. _

_ Finally, the door opened fully, and the light was turned on. Clara had to close her eyes against the onslaught of brightness. Before she did, she saw tiled walls and other bathtubs with bizarre covers on them. Some part of her brain recognized them the way she might have recognized a dragon or a mermaid. Something from a story which now appeared inexplicably in front of her. The water drained. There were two pairs of footsteps this time, she realized, and then she heard snaps being pulled undone and her neck was free. Hands reached down and got her to her feet, but she was shaking so badly she couldn’t stand. Some sort of scratchy nightgown was pulled over her head and she was lifted into a rolling chair. _

_ Ideas began to bloom in the recesses of her mind, but she couldn’t string her observations together. In her current state, Clara was no longer even capable of curiosity about what was happening to her. _

* * *

Back in Atlantic City Richard and Jimmy split up. Richard took a deep breath and knocked firmly on Chalky White’s door.

“Harrow, what the fuck you doing knocking on my door and scaring my family at this hour?” Chalky said when he opened the door, his gun still in his hand.

“Mmm. My apologies, Mr. White. To your family. But my wife. Was taken.”

Chalky blinked. When the hell did Harrow get married?

“Who you marry? When?”

Richard looked down at his feet and then back up. “Clara Thompson. A little over. Two weeks ago. Jimmy and I. Would be in your debt. Forever.” Two weeks, Richard thought that he didn’t deserve and now he’d allowed her to be hurt, to be taken.

“Nucky’s Clara?” Chalky asked, shocked. Then he thought back to last year when Harrow had been sitting in Nucky’s hallway staring straight into the drawing-room of the Ritz, his face as carefully blank as ever, but the corner of his mouth turned up. When Chalky stole a look into the drawing-room, he saw Clara Thompson sitting on the sofa, where Harrow could see her. She’d been talking to him, Chalky realized.

It made him think how clever he was to keep the men he did business with far away from his Maybelle. Of course, Maybelle had Lenore to look after her while Clara Thompson was motherless.

“I’ll see about getting some information. We’ll get your wife back,” Chalky promised. The man looked heartbroken, and Chalky’s own heart seized at the idea of Lenore or Maybelle being snatched from the porch of their home. “I married a princess. Lenore is a sight too fancy for a man like me, but we been happy for almost two decades now. Well, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Princesses don’t make for cheap wives.”

After Harrow drove off, Chalky considered. Why hadn’t Nucky told him his daughter had gone missing? Didn’t the man know he’d help find her? Ain’t no man want their enemies to think their women and children were acceptable victims in their business dealings.

Something about this smelled fishier than the underside of the Steel Pier, Chalky decided.

* * *

The copper mansard roof gleamed in the early morning sunlight as Jimmy pulled up to the white brick house. Clara liked this house, he remembered, saying it felt like a home and not like a mausoleum. It reminded him of Clara’s grandfather’s house, which was probably why she liked it.

Whitlock’s maid had obviously still been in bed when he started banging on the door, and it took a few minutes for Leander to come down the stairs, dressed in a robe and slippers.

“I wouldn’t be here at this time if it wasn’t important. Leander, yesterday, day before, you said something about Clara being happy with the money. What did you mean?”

Leander rubbed his eyes. “Clara’s married.”

“Whatever he has I know he’ll share, but Richard doesn’t have…”

Leander laughed a little. “I doubt your Mr. Harrow will be able to maintain Clara in the lifestyle her grandfather wanted for her. Jeffries left the bulk of his estate to Clara. The terms of the will gave Clara access to the money on her twenty-fifth birthday, or on the occasion of her marriage. Whichever came first.”

Fuck, Jimmy thought. “Clara doesn’t know. She has no idea. And someone snatched her off my porch yesterday afternoon, screaming. Someone has her. Richard is-he’s going out of his mind with fear. He’d burn the city down to get her back. But Nuck, I don’t think he’s doing anything.”

“Someone took Clara?” Leander repeated, and a picture started to form in his mind. “God damn Nucky Thompson.

“Nuck, he’s been acting like a Victorian father in a melodrama over Richard and Clara. He doesn’t even think that they, uh, engage in marital relations. Nuck is usually so even-keeled about these sorts of things, but he’s been irrational about this.”

“Because Clara chose the worst time from Thompson’s perspective to get married. This is why Jeffries left two trustees to oversee Clara’s inheritance. They both died,” Leander did the math in his head, “back when you two were still in high school. Nucky used his power to get himself put on as trustee. Who would argue with him about it? But then no one had oversight over her money, no one apparently even made sure she knew of it.”

Jimmy ran his hand through his hair and reached for his cigarettes. “Nuck’s got money problems. He had a lot of cash coming in, but he used it all to buy land ‘cause he just knew his road deal was going to go through and it was going to make him really rich. But then we took away the money from liquor and graft and…”

“And so the son of a bitch helped himself to the money Jeffries left Clara. Thompson never dreamed she’d up and marry Harrow in the middle of all of this.” Leander shook his head. “Damn that Piney trash. Undoubtedly he’s used her money and replaced it over the years, but this time she unknowingly caught him out.”

Jimmy put his hand over his eyes. “I don’t think it’s just the money, but…”

“Nucky Thompson is the one who kidnapped Clara.”

“Well, where the fuck does he have her?” Jimmy asked, his anger rising once more.

* * *

She was so cold it was almost unbearable, and by habit, tried to move her leg over to Richard’s for warmth. Her leg was stuck, though. Why couldn’t she move it? Her arms, as well, were immobilized and she was on her back. She hated sleeping on her back. It was all wrong, she thought. She should smell salty ocean air and Richard’s musky rain scent, but instead she just smelled bleach. Instead of her Sea Island cotton pajamas, some sort of heavy gown covered her. And instead of the comfortable guest bed made up with Angela’s percale sheets, she was on some thin cot with scratchy sheets.

The panic rose in her chest when she felt someone watching her. It was a struggle, but she managed to open her eyes. She was in a hospital, she realized. Why? Was she hurt?

“Daddy,” she said, when her eyes resumed working well enough to make out her father’s beige suit and red carnation boutonniere. “What’s happening?” she croaked out, her mouth unbearably dry. “Where’s Richard?” She tried to sit up, but realized her ankles and wrists were restrained. Leather cuffs were holding her down.

“First of all, Clara, you need to understand that everything that's happening is because of choices you made. And that playtime is over.”

Her father stood and walked over to her, dropping something into her hand. The beige muslin cord was a familiar feeling under her hand. Her heart began pounding, and her fingers clumsily turned the object until the metal circle was turned upright in her hand. She could barely make out the engraving, but her heart knew what she was going to see before her eyes adjusted.

Richard Harrow, P.F.C.

She struggled again to sit up, to breathe, to break away but she was trapped on the bed.

“Daddy,” she managed to wheeze out as the fear slammed into her. “Why?”

“Why do you think? He was killed days ago, Clara. You made a fool of yourself when you were told. That’s why you are here. I had no choice but to commit you.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear-I am a huge proponent of counseling and mental health treatment. All three of my main characters-Clara, Jimmy, Richard-deal with PTSD and varying types of anxiety. Clara and Jimmy additionally have massive amounts of generational trauma. They all would benefit from counseling and psychiatric treatment. 
> 
> The mental institutions of the 1920s weren't set up to help anyone deal with their issues in a helpful manner. And fathers really did institutionalize rebellious daughters for disobeying, being involved with men the father's didn't approve of, or to retain control of the daughter's assets (one might say that story continues with Britney Spears).


	31. 'Tis One Thing to be Tempted...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara's location is revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was supposed to be the last chapter, but I struggled with and realized that it's because it really needed two more chapters to wrap everything up. I'll be back soon with the final, for real, chapter..

August 1921

**Thompson Mansion**

The sheet was heavy and stuck to her naked bosom, but not even the stifling heat kept her from reaching her hand out, hoping to touch him, hoping for more before she needed to get up and begin the never ending routine. But instead her hand just drifted across damp percale. 

Katy frowned and forced her eyes open. Five in the morning, according to her bedside clock. Why was Owen already up? With a sigh, she shuffled off to wash and dress in her morning uniform. The day was obviously going to be another scorcher, so she decided that if she started early she could rest later in the day when the heat and humidity would be unbearable.

These rare moments of solitude in the silent house gave her time to think as she prepared for the day. Katy frowned, thinking about the very odd wedding between Mr. Thompson and the uppity Mrs. Schroeder yesterday. No doubt she’d be even worse now that she’d convinced the man to make it legal, although Katy knew Margaret Schroeder Thompson was no better than she should be. What had bothered Katy, though, was Owen. Owen looked pained throughout the ceremony. At first Katy thought it was because he was worried she’d get ideas (and she did have ideas, she didn’t plan to spend much more of her twenties stuffed into someone else's attic), but watching his face she began to doubt what was making him anxious.

Over the summer Katy had noticed...things. She didn’t like how Owen would let his eyes drift over Margaret, and more than once she’d noticed Margaret looking at Owen for longer than she should have. Finally, she’d asked Owen if there was something between him and their employer’s mistress. 

There was one tie between the two Katy knew she couldn’t compete with, and she feared that was the hold Margaret held over Owen. Katy was so young when she emigrated from Ireland that she didn’t yearn for the rolling green hills in the way she knew Owen did. The way melancholy would roll over him like he was getting lost in a fog, it scared her. It scared her even more that she’d see the same in Margaret Schroeder.

Adding to the strangeness of yesterday was that very odd husband of Clara Thompson’s showing up. Imagine having all of Clara’s advantages and choosing that for your mate, Katy thought. Katy knew she was prettier than Clara, and also knew that if she’d been handed the advantage of being Enoch Thompson’s daughter she’d have landed a much better husband. Still, although at first she thought Clara was a haughty princess when she came to the house, Katy had grown to like her during the time Emily had polio. Clara had attempted to clean the house, and had taken on the dangerous job of burning the children’s belongings. Also, Clara listened to her talk about Owen like...like a friend, Katy thought. When Owen returned with Thompson from their trip Clara came up with a ruse so she and Owen could be alone for a few minutes. 

It was obvious to anyone with eyes when Clara came to live in the house at the end of June that she was nursing a broken heart. Katy had assumed it was that very nice looking Jimmy Darmody (gossip said he and Clara thought of each other as siblings, but nothing other than blood would have kept her away from that, Katy knew) Clara was heartbroken over. It wasn’t until Mr. Harrow showed up and took Clara right from Mr. Thompson’s grasp that Katy realized who she was in love with. The haughty girl all but swooned at the sight of the man standing in her father’s foyer. Not that Katy blamed her. If Owen had ever come for her like that, she’d still be recovering. 

Katy was almost in the kitchen when she heard the sound of the tea kettle. The new cook, Katy assumed, but then heard familiar footsteps on the linoleum tiles of the kitchen floor. Owen. She froze on the landing, unsure why he’d be down in the kitchen at this hour.

“No, you are going to tell me what is occurring,” Margaret whispered loudly enough that Katy could hear, “Richard and Jimmy come bursting in yesterday looking like the world is ending, and Enoch lets them in! Even though he said he had to spend the rest of the day closeted with his attorney Bill Fallon to prepare for the trial, he let them in! And then Mr. Rothstein called late last evening to speak about Clara. Why? You came out of Enoch’s office looking like the devil himself and still wouldn’t tell me what’s going on.”

Katy leaned against the wall, willing herself not to breathe. 

“It was a difficult day. Imagine what it’s like to watch the woman you love marry someone else for his money,” Owen said intently.

Only placing her hand over her mouth stifled her gasp, but the two in the kitchen were far to intent in their own conversation to hear her. Katy thought she could feel her own heart break. Owen loved Margaret.

“It wasn’t...I had to make things right. I had to pay for my sins and correct my mistakes,” Margaret whispered.

“So marrying Thompson was a penance, like saying three hail marys?”

“Don’t laugh. And don’t change the subject. Tell me what is happening. The children, Owen, the children depend on Enoch surviving this.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Owen spoke again. “I don’t understand it, Margaret. Someone took Clara from Darmody’s house. According to Darmody’s kid, she was screaming. When Darmody and Harrow told Thompson yesterday, I’d have sworn to it that his heart was breaking. But once they left, he didn’t show any concern. He sent me on an errand, all right, but to get a copy of Harrow’s dog tags from the Armory. And now, we’re going to a private asylum on the mainland.”

“He threatened her, back when she left with Harrow,” Margaret said in an unsteady voice. “He wouldn’t, he couldn’t do something to Clara, could he?”

There was no answer. 

Owen finally spoke again. “The important thing is that you are well, and that we can still…”

Fear finally broke through Katy’s shock, and she silently walked backwards up the stairs to the main floor and then ran to her room. Owen, betraying her with Margaret. She wanted to be sick. 

Once in her room, she paced the floor. She should tell Mr. Thompson, that’s what she should do, she thought and started back out her door. No, she realized, if the man was willing to harm his own daughter what might he do to her for delivering unwelcome news? What might he do to Owen, she wondered, and hated herself for caring.

And poor Clara, what had Mr. Thompson done to her? Katy’s mother had brought her up on tales of the Magdalene Sisters, and Owen obviously had thought Clara was locked in the sanatorium they were going to visit. Was Clara locked in some place similar? 

Katy looked around her attic room, feeling trapped herself. What she needed, Katy thought, was an out. If she helped find Clara, then wouldn’t Clara and her husband feel beholden? She already knew from gossip that Clara was caring for Darmody’s son. Clara would need help. Katy had eaten food Clara had tried to prepare.

God himself knew that Clara would have to be easier to work for than Margaret Schroeder. And Katy knew she couldn’t stay in this house.

Katy unwound the servant’s cap from her head, replacing it with her own straw boater, and proceeded to sneak out of the house. Thankfully, she thought, she’d gone with Owen to take Clara’s belongings to the beach house some weeks ago. Katy set off on foot.

* * *

**Darmody Beach House**

Richard pulled back up to the house and stared blankly at it. Mr. White was going to look for her. Lansky and Capone had promised to ask around. He and Jimmy had gone after the Butcher, and Jimmy had dispatched him for killing Angela.

There was still no clue as to who had Clara. 

It was the one thing he thought he could do for her, keep her safe. Never let her be afraid. He’d failed time and time again since he ripped her from the safety of her father’s house. He and Jimmy couldn’t even keep Tommy safe. It was only Clara’s game that saved the boy from whatever fate befell Clara. 

Whatever fate. He closed his eye, trying not to picture her hurt or screaming or worse.

“Mr. Harrow,” a woman’s voice called from behind him.

Richard turned quickly, his hand going to the Glock in his waistband as he went. A brunette in a gray dress and straw hat stood in the drive. He had seen her before, he thought.

“I’m Katy Campbell. I’m one of Mr. Thompson’s maids? I’m here because…” Katy took a deep breath. “I’m here because I think Mr. Thompson has Clara.”

Before Richard could speak, he heard the sound of Jimmy’s faulty clutch coming down the street. As Jimmy got out of the car, he stared at Richard and Katy.

“This is. Katy. She works. For Nucky. She says he has Clara,” Richard said as Jimmy approached, not quite believing the words even as they came out of his mouth.

“Do you know where?” Jimmy asked, trying to keep his voice level.

Richard looked over at him, hearing in Jimmy’s voice that he already knew. For a moment, relief flooded him. Nucky had Clara. She was safe, her father had her…

And then he remembered Clara’s father was not his own. Whatever his father’s faults, he would never hurt Emma. Nucky was furious, at Jimmy’s betrayal, at Clara’s betrayal. By choosing him.

“In a private sanitarium on the mainland,” Katy offered, subtly eyeing Jimmy. He was as handsome as everyone said, even with the limp, she thought.

“We have to call Leander,” Jimmy said. “Miss Campbell, please go inside. Rich?” Jimmy motioned to the back of his car.

Both men looked through the back window of Jimmy’s Ford, where Mickey Doyle’s eyes looked up at them fearfully as he lay bound and gagged. There was a smell that made Jimmy groan internally. Fuck, his Ford was never going to be clean again.

“We gotta do something with him.”

* * *

  
**Windcliff Sanitarium**

Clara’s fingers closed around the cold metal tag. How odd, she thought. I’ve felt them brush against me, under the table in the darkness, under the blankets in the woods, in our bed but I’ve never actually touched them purposefully. Touching them felt like I would be invading something that was just Richard’s.

No, that wasn’t right, she thought, but she couldn’t remember what wasn’t right and somewhere in her mind she heard them as Richard sat them on the bedside table...

Richard, dead. Clara tried to breathe but her lungs wouldn’t cooperate. For one horrible moment she thought she was going to vomit. 

“How?” she managed to whisper. 

“He and James were on a bootlegging run, something went wrong.”

I’m so cold, Clara thought. It felt like ice water was flowing through her veins.

Clara closed her eyes against the hot tears forming. Her mind felt like a jigsaw puzzle upended from its box. Think, she commanded, and tried to feel for the right pieces in the darkness of her memory, searching for that last morning. At Richard’s. No, she thought again, at the beach house.

She could feel the side of Richard’s mouth warm against hers, his moustache brushing against her lips. It wasn’t a very good kiss, it was hurried, he had walls up...

And with each other, they didn’t, almost never. Would he have always had walls up if she hadn’t come upon so unexpectedly in Jimmy’s room, she wondered? It had seemed such a good idea, but then she realized what sort of business Father’s associate Mr. Torrio was running and she saw that girl with her breasts hanging out and those men had leered at her and she ran into Jimmy’s room and Richard was there without his mask. 

She’d been a mess, unable to reach for the affable, removed version of herself she hid behind to mask her shyness and anxiety. He was there without his mask, and she’d scared him and felt badly about it, but then it hadn’t mattered because he listened to her like she was a person and not a means to an end and he teased her and made her feel safe. She had thought about him from the moment he left her in front of the hotel in Chicago until she saw him again sitting on the Boardwalk looking like he was about to come out of his skin.

But he had been far away from her during that kiss because...

Because he was going to kill someone, and he always went away inside himself then.

They were standing in the kitchen. Tommy was eating. Jimmy was eating. Jimmy, downstairs in the morning. When Richard kissed her so perfunctorily Jimmy had looked up at her and put his hand over hers. Because she was scared.

Because Richard and Jimmy were going to kill...Neary, whom they had known their whole lives. Jimmy’s bootlegging empire was in tatters, it's why she thought they could all make a fresh start. Richard could have his hardware store, she could write, Jimmy could go back to school…

But if Richard was dead, they couldn’t do that, and how could Richard be dead when they had only been married a little over two weeks? They had so many plans, so many things to do…

“If you ever want to get out, you need to sign these papers,” her father said again, but he sounded so far away, and he said so many things. 

This was wrong. It was all wrong. They weren’t bootlegging, and Richard wouldn’t leave her, because she couldn’t take it, she’d fall into the ice pit she could feel in her mind and never be warm again. She had been cold before, she didn’t want to be cold again.

“Where’s Jimmy?” Clara asked. Jimmy would tell her what was going on.

“Where do you think, Clara? In a ditch with your precious Richard.”

Darcy had kept trying to put his hand over her breast, and she was in the hallway pushing him away when Jimmy came through the elevator and she knew something was wrong before he started talking. He was leaving, he was going to Chicago, because her father insisted and Clara was so angry because the whole reason she had to let Darcy paw at her was for Jimmy to be in Atlantic City.

“No,” Clara said urgently. “You promised that if I said yes he could stay in Atlantic City but then you made him go to Chicago!”

“Clara,” Nucky said, with actual concern in his voice.

Clara swallowed around the lump in her throat, trying to push away from the ice encroaching around her. That was last year, she thought. This is now. “Bootlegging?” she asked, remembering what he had said earlier.

“Yes.”

There was something else she should worry about. What? Her other hand closed and she could almost feel a hot, sticky little hand grabbing at it. “Tommy?”

Nucky blinked. “He’s with his grandmother. He’s her concern, Clara, not yours.”

Jimmy, pushing her against the floor, his face looming over hers. “Gillian hurt Jimmy,” Clara whispered.

Clara closed her eyes, trying to make a picture from all the jagged pieces in her mind. Neary, not bootleggers. Her father forcing her to accept Darcy and then breaking their arrangement. Always ignoring what Gillian did to Jimmy, always ignoring what he could not make benefit him.

Richard’s hand sliding the ring on her finger. Their marriage didn’t benefit her father. 

Jimmy committed treason. In the end, that hadn’t mattered to her. Clara forced her eyes open. 

What mattered to her father, really, she considered, pushing away all other thoughts. 

“What papers do you want me to sign?” 

Nucky’s eyes narrowed. “You are taking this well.”

“What papers?” she asked again, trying to keep her voice steady, trying to keep away from the emotional cliff she knew she could not let herself fall from. If she fell, she was lost. Her fingers closed tightly around the dog tags. How did her father have them?

“Sign them and you will be free,” Nucky answered.

“But what are they?” Clara asked, struggling and falling to sit up. “And where is Mr. Whitlock? He’s my attorney, if you want me to sign something I want him here.”

The door squeaked as it opened, and heavy footsteps echoed around the linoleum floors and bare walls. “I see Miss Thompson is awake,” the man said in a voice that immediately set what was left of Clara’s nerves on edge.

“Mrs. Harrow,” Clara corrected, knowing she had to hold onto everything she knew to be true.

“She’s still delusional,” Nucky snapped at the doctor. 

“We were married in Elkton, someone took my rings,” Clara began.

“He’s a goddamn corpse, Clara!”

Clara gasped, unable to stop herself from seeing it and the world spun madly around her.

“Sign these and we can discuss getting you out of here,” her father said softly. “Of course this is all very difficult for you.”

“Let me see them,” Clara demanded, ignoring her father’s words.

He didn’t hand them over. 

Clara turned her head back to the doctor, focusing on what was possible. “My attorney is Leander Whitlock. He lives at 101 South Montgomery Avenue in Atlantic City. Please get him here.”

“Whitlock is not our family’s attorney.”

“No, he’s mine! I hired him…” Clara’s voice drifted off, she tried to remember the difference between what was true and what was acceptable to say. Remembering she needed an ally, but also remembering she had a good reason she told everyone else…”to help me with the contract for my books. ”

“Your books,” Nucky scoffed and looked up at the doctor. “Clara believes she wrote two children’s books.”

Angela pouring her a drink the night before her first book came out. Richard buying the first copy. Tommy helping her paste stamps on a package. “More than that, now,” she said softly.

“Another delusion. Your name isn’t on those books, Clara.”

Clara blinked. Of course her name wasn’t on them. “No, because Mr. Stratemeyer…”

“You see what we’re dealing with here. She’s lost all basis in reality,” Nucky snapped at the doctor. “Clara, are you going to sign the papers? The doctor will let you return home.”

Asking for Leander wasn’t helping her at the moment, Clara thought. What papers did her father want her to sign so badly? 

Clara closed her eyes. “I’ll sign them,” she softly. “Please, I just want to go home.”

The nurse came around and unbuckled her right wrist. Clara felt the cold metal of a fountain pen being placed in her right hand and the smoothness of the paper slide under it. Her hand felt heavy and odd, so it took her a moment to maneuver the pen where she wanted it, and then she snatched the paper and brought it close to her face.

Complaint for Annulment. Clara Susan Thompson, Plaintiff. Richard Harrow, Defendant. 

“His middle name is Henry,” Clara whispered. “His mother loved Shakespeare.”

“There’s no need for you to read them,” Nucky snapped.

Why would she need to sign annulment papers, Clara wondered. Why would her father even want her to if Richard was…

“Why?” Clara whispered.

“I’m trying to clean up your mess,” Nucky answered.

Clara shook her head from side to side, trying desperately to keep her thoughts in the proper order. “If Richard is...if he’s...why do I need to sign annulment papers?”

“For once in your life, can you just do as you're told?”

“I want Mr. Whitlock to read them,” Clara repeated. “I want to understand.”

How the fuck had it come to this, Nucky wondered. How had Clara and Jimmy made mistake after mistake after mistake that left with him no choices but these? Clara’s hair, now worn in that ridiculous bob, was plastered to her head and face. Her neck was raw and bruised from whatever the hell they’d done to her to make her cooperate. Couldn’t she see how difficult this was for him? But everyone had to pay for their mistakes, and he couldn’t let his love for her blind him to what must be done for his family.

Nucky closed his eyes. Jesus, he knew how foolishly stubborn she was. He should have anticipated this. He checked his watch. Damn it, he had to get to court.

“Do what you must,” Nucky said to the doctor.

The nurse took the pen and papers from Clara’s hand, but when she tried to take the dog tags from Clara’s grasp Clara fought back and the doctor intervened. 

“Miss Thompson, let go,” the nurse instructed.

“Mrs. Harrow,” Clara snapped back.

“Get her ready for another hydrotherapy treatment,” the doctor instructed the nurse.

“No, no, please,” Clara begged.

Although he tried not to hear, as Nucky opened the door to go down the stairs the last sound he heard was that of his daughter’s screams.

* * *

**Darmody Beach House**

Leander moved carefully. The last weeks had taken their toll on him. Once more he damned Nucky Thompson to the depths of hell, damned former Sheriff Peter Lindsay for ever introducing Thompson to Louis back when Thompson was a child, and damned Louis for seeing Thompson as the replacement for the son he never thought he’d have. 

“Miss Campbell, you have our gratitude for informing us where Nucky hid Clara. Please know we will make sure you are well compensated for your bravery.”

“I’d also like a job,” Katy said. “I can’t stay at the Thompsons.”

Jimmy smiled at her. “Neither Richard nor I are brave enough to hire someone for the house without Clara’s okay. But I’m sure she’ll like the idea.”

“For now, though, we must ask you to return to the Thompsons,” Leander continued, not having the mental wherewithal to consider the complicated domestic arrangements of the Darmody-Harrows. 

After more reassurance Katy finally left, promising to let them know immediately if she learned anything else. 

“Nucky committed her as Clara Thompson, spinster,” Leander continued. “James, while perhaps this isn’t the opportune moment to bring this up, this sort of behavior is exactly why I told you not to end the conspiracy against him. You were within inches of ridding us of the scourge of Thompson.”

Jimmy ran his tongue along his bottom teeth. Fuck it all to hell. He had loved Nucky, he needed to fix what was broken, make amends. He looked at Richard, who stood at perfect attention, a soldier once more. Richard had told him Nucky wouldn’t forgive him, and Jimmy had been prepared to endure the consequences of his action.

But Nuck had taken Clara’s money and then done this? Leander was right, and that pissed Jimmy off even more.

“The good news is since Clara’s married, Nucky doesn’t have any standing to have her committed. Only Mr. Harrow has that sort of power over her, or if the court decides she’s mentally deficient. At one o’clock there’s a hearing in probate court.You’ll need to prove the…” Leander took a deep breath. “Completeness of the marriage. You should be prepared for questions. I assume that will not be an issue?”

No one answered. “Gather up her correspondence, anything to prove Clara’s soundness of mind. Other than you two, would anyone else testify on her behalf?”

Jimmy smiled at Leander. “Lady Rose Malley, daughter of the Earl of Danby. She’s Clara’s best friend, she’s keeping Tommy in Cape May.”

Of course the Thompson girl’s friend was a member of the aristocracy, Leander thought with a half-smile. Jeffries would be proud of his odd little grandchild.

Richard looked down, barely hearing Leander and Jimmy’s exchange. “He did this. He put her there because. She married me.”

“Mr. Harrow, Nucky did this because he’s been robbing his daughter blind for years,” Leander said.

“He did this to punish Clara for choosing me,” Jimmy said at the same time.

A very loud knock sounded at the door. Leander watched as the hands of both younger men went to their waistbands. He suddenly thought of Clara sitting in his drawing room, asking did anyone think Prohibition made the world safer. 

It certainly hadn’t made her world safer, Leander thought. James let in a young man in a suit so flashy and of such dubious taste, although of obviously high quality, that Leander reflected it would make Nucky jealous.

“Any word?” the man asked as he walked in.

Once more, James and Harrow shared an intense glance. “Nucky took her,” Harrow finally said.

“He’s locked her in an insane asylum,” Jimmy added.

Leander made his excuses and left to go prepare for court.

“Fucking Thompson.” Charlie said.

“Leander will get her out,” Jimmy said.

Charlie was struck by Darmody’s belief that the elderly man could help.He wouldn’t of pegged Darmody as a man who believed in Santa Clause.

“We got a problem, though.” Jimmy continued.

“What’s it?’ Charlie asked.

Darmody walked him to the Ford, where Mickey Doyle still lay hog-tied in the backseat. “Can you do something with him? We can’t let him talk to Nucky until all of this is done.”

“You want me to watch Mickey fucking Doyle? Jesus Christ, he smells like a fucking outhouse. Darmody, you are a pain in the ass.”

Doyle’s big blue eyes were filled with fear above the rough gag made of his own, less than pristine, handkerchiefs. 

Although, Charlie reflected as he swung into the driver’s seat, Doyle bound and gagged was the best version of Doyle he had yet encountered. Did AR still have a half-million buck life insurance policy on the jerk? He should call Meyer and find out, he thought as the clutch caught. Jesus Christ, this car was a piece of shit. He'd also tell Meyer about Clara. After their meeting with Rothstein he had made it known they were to share everything they learned about Atlantic City.

* * *

**Federal Court House/Thompson Mansion**  
  
Nucky walked out of court a free man. He stopped and took a deep breath. Fresh air, he thought, smelled a lot like freedom. As the humidity of the day settled over him like a blanket he allowed a moment to bask in the great pride in the way he had arranged the pieces like dominoes, and watched everything fall perfectly into place. James had taken care of Neary, and although Esther Randolph had tried to discount the signed confession it had held. Margaret marrying him removed the threat of her testimony. Eli, well, he had made a deal with his dear brother. When Eli realized exactly what Nucky was asking there had been tears in his eyes. Like those tears were going to change Nucky’s plans. 

And who would have guessed that it was his shoe shine man, Harlan, who held the key to neutralizing Van Alden, the relentless Prohibition agent? Who would have fucking dreamed the man had drowned another Prohibition agent in some sort of fit of religious mania in front of an entire congregation?

Ah, yes, Agent Van Alden, a man so convinced of his religious superiority that he had knocked up Lucy. Nucky spared barely a thought for his ex-mistress, nor one for Lucy’s daughter, who was now in the wind with her fugitive father. 

As to his own daughter, he considered? Well, the first item on his agenda was dealing with James and his little henchman. Once they were dispatched, he’d take Clara from the sanitarium and send her to Europe. A few more days in Windcliff might actually teach his intractable daughter that no one was immune from the consequences of their actions.

Margaret smiled and put her arms around him when he arrived home. Sure, he thought, he might have married her to keep her off the witness stand, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t looking forward to having a wife, a family. A real family, this time. And Margaret was young, they could have more children. It had been the right decision to sign his fortune, which at this point mostly consisted of land carefully collected to benefit from the upcoming road project, over to her for safe keeping while the trial loomed. But now the danger had passed. Soon he’d reap the rewards of his planning. 

He’d have to replace Clara’s trust fund, of course. Even after he took care of this foolish mésalliance with Harrow, she’d be twenty-five in two more years and he would, actually, like to see her married and settled. Just to someone he approved of. But after he cashed in on the land deal he’d never again have need of the money Jeffries left Clara. 

Hell, he thought he’d never have need of it again after 1918 with the money he made off the war, and certainly not after he’d made a million dollars off of Rothstein in 1920. It was Clara’s precious Jimmy who cut off his cash flow and made using her money a necessity. It turned out for the best that Clara had thrown over Darcy Blaine, because of course he had been forced to disclose the trust fund to the Blaine family when they were hashing out the terms of the financial arrangements for the marriage. If Clara had married Blaine, then Jeffries’ money wouldn't have been available when he needed it.

For a moment he realized that Harrow had married Clara not knowing about the trust fund. No other man he dangled Clara in front of would marry her without the knowledge that they were marrying a rich woman. Harrow, he thought, must actually love her. It gave him a moment of pause before he turned back to Margaret to tell her he’d need her to sign the papers turning his fortune back over to him as soon as possible.

Eddie knocked on the door, and came inside. Nucky could see he was nervous.

“Pour the champagne! This is a day to celebrate!” Nucky instructed.

Eddie kept his hand on the doorknob, like he was ensuring a smooth escape route. “That was Mr. Fallon on the telephone. He said he just saw your name on another court docket. Atlantic County Probate Court this afternoon. For Clara’s commitment hearing.”

Margaret turned. Nucky looked away, not wanting to see the look on her face.

“Enoch? Please tell me you didn’t?” she asked, and he could hear the pleading tone in her voice.

“I did what I had to,” he said before nodding at Eddie to take Margaret out of the room.

Court 

Rose Malley adjusted her hat as she made her way across the lobby of the Reading Termnal towards Jimmy Darmody. 

“Did he really have her committed?” Rose asked breathlessly. 

Jimmy nodded his answer.

Rose’s mouth twisted and her own fury started to rise in her chest. Clara, condemned to an institution. She shuddered as she thought of the horrors she had heard went on inside their walls. What was Clara enduring?

Clara, whose biggest fear was that she would lose control of her mind the way her mother did..

“My own father certainly wasn’t thrilled when I married Dennis, and did his share of raging and making threats, but he would have never…”

“Yeah, Nuck is truly one of a kind,” Jimmy said, and Rose heard the despair and anger in his voice.

“Did everything work out the way you wanted?” Jimmy asked suddenly.

Rose stared straight ahead. “I love Dennis. I’m not sorry we married. But life, and marriage, is complicated.”

“That it is.”

Taking a deep breath, Rose asked the question that had been on her mind. “When did you meet Mr. Harrow?”

Jimmy looked over at her, surprised. “Chicago, last spring.”

Now it was Rose’s turn to look surprised. “You didn’t meet during the war?”

“Didn’t know he existed until last spring,” Jimmy said again as he opened the door to Richard’s Ford.

“Thank you. For coming to help,” Richard said, and Rose could hear the effort it took.

She placed her hand on Richard’s forearm. “Clara is my dearest friend. We’ve been to hell and back together, in the war. We survived boarding school together. She was there for my fight to be with Dennis. I’ll always be there for her.”

Jimmy lit another cigarette in the backseat. He could hear Clara’s voice saying, _I wasn’t sitting around pouring tea and smiling at soldiers_. Now Rose saying, _we’ve been to hell and back_. Had he ever once really asked Clara about her experience in Europe, other than to mock her little affair? What exactly had Clara done, other than some officer?

“How is.Tommy?” Richard asked.

Rose smiled, deciding to forgo telling the poor man that the child had screamed half the night and had been found this morning sleeping under his bed. “He’ll be fine as soon as we get him and Clara home.”

At the courthouse, Leander stood in the corridor waiting. “Judge Nelson Johnson is overseeing the hearing. First, though, he wants to meet with all of us in chambers. He’s hoping, as am I, that we can resolve this quickly.”

“And Clara can come home?” Richard asked.

“Of course that’s our hope,” Leander replied.

Bill Fallon always tried to hold onto his cosmopolitan, blasé exterior, even though his clients had a way of trying him. Certainly none more so than Nucky fucking Thompson. 

“You do realize, Nucky,” Fallon said, purposefully maintaining a steady voice, “that double jeopardy did not apply this morning. Miss Randolph can refile the charges at any time. Especially, say, if your daughter or her husband or James Darmody, all of whom have knowledge of the inner workings of your affairs, decided to meet with her and share fresh details about your undertakings.”

“This is a family matter, Fallon.”

Tonight, Fallon thought, he’d be back in New York with a showgirl in his lap and a cold drink in his hand. He just had to see Thompson through his latest debacle, as a favor to Rothstein. 

“You’ve materially misrepresented your daughter’s life. I’m fairly certain Leander Whitlock is more than capable of proving that she is married, and therefore it was not in your power to have her committed.”

The foursome who entered Judge Johnson’s chambers didn’t calm Fallon’s nerves. An accomplished old man, two gangsters, and one society lady. God damn was Arnold going to owe him.

“Mrs. Harrow is supposed to be here,” Leander began.

“We don’t concede that this marriage is valid,” the sniveling little lawyer for the Windcliffe said.

“Here is the marriage certificate,” Leander continued, pulling the document from his attache case. “Lady Rose Malley has letters Clara wrote her after the wedding. The Harrows have been residing with Mr. Darmody. He can attest that they’ve been living as husband and wife. Mr. Harrow will answer any questions Your Honor may have. But where is Clara?”

“A good question.” The judge turned to look at Mr. Price.

“She is being brought here now.”

The judge looked at Leander’s paperwork. “Everything seems to be in order. Mr. Thompson, why do you think the marriage isn’t valid?”

“This is one of my daughter’s silly little stunts,” Nucky began.

“Clara,” Rose said with inflection on the name, “does not pull silly little stunts.”

The judge decided to ignore the woman’s outburst. “Mr. Harrow, on the record, will you state that your marriage is valid?”

“Yes. Your Honor.”

“Mr. Darmody, you will state on the record that they are residing with you, and living as a married couple?”

“Absolutely, they…”

Jimmy never finished the thought, because right then the door opened and the creaky sound of a wheeled chair being pushed across the wooden floor filled the room. 

Johnson saw immediately that he was going to lose control of his chambers. 

Jimmy jumped to his feet and managed to grab Richard before he got to Clara. “Wait,” he directed in his friend’s ear. “You gotta wait.. She’s going to be okay.”

Jesus Fucking Christ, what had Nucky let them do to her? She was wearing the same green skirt and striped blouse she was wearing that morning-yesterday morning, he realized-but she looked like a different person. She was strapped into the chair, which forced her legs into an odd angle. Her head lolled against her shoulder. The worst though was her neck. It looked she had been strangled.

No one caught Rose, and she was kneeling in front of Clara before anyone could stop her.

“I must insist,” Price started feebly.

“Lady Malley is a nurse, and Mrs. Harrow is obviously in need of attention!” Whitlock responded.

The judge nodded. 

Rose put her hands on either side of her friend’s face. “Clara,” she said softly.

Clara slowly opened her eyes, the light from the windows blinding her. “Rose,” she said softly, relief in her voice, but the Rose saw her tense up again. “Are you real?”

“Yes, Clara. I’m real. I’m here. Richard’s here, Jimmy’s…”

“They said Richard, Jimmy, that they’re…” Clara’s voice broke. “That they were killed,” she finally managed to say.

“No, Clara, no, they are here. Who said that?”

“My father, the doctors. They said Richard was in a ditch…”

“No, no he’s here, darling. Take a deep breath, he’ll be with you in just a moment.” 

Rose turned away, her hands busy unbuckling the restraints tying Clara to the chair, and took her own deep breath. How could Clara's father do such a thing?.

“Mr. Whitlock, Mr. Thompson and the doctors told her that Richard and Jimmy were dead!” Rose’s dulcet tone and cultivated accent cut through the other chaos in the room and everyone else fell silent.

Bill Fallon put his hand over his face and decided he was going to need many, many drinks and many, many showgirls when he returned to New York.

He leaned over and hissed in his client’s ear. “You haven’t listened to me yet, Nucky, but you need to now. This has the capacity to turn into an utter disaster for you. I’m not sure why you have persisted, but you need to put an end to it. Now.”

Thompson didn’t say anything, he just kept staring at his daughter, but finally he nodded.

Fallon stood. “Your Honor, this is a disagreement between father and daughter that got out of hand. My client understands now that Clara is indeed married, and will withdraw the papers he signed with the court’s consent.”

“She is still delusional….” Price interjected.

“What’s her delusion?” Leander snapped. “That she’s married and her husband is alive?”

“She says she writes books but her name....”

“God’s Nightgown! The girl does write books, she says it’s called ghostwriting. I helped her negotiate her contract with the publisher, Your Honor,” Leander rebutted.

“Mr. Whitlock, that sort of language won’t be used in this court! But I agree nonetheless, and Clara Harrow will be released immediately.”

There was so much going on, so many people shouting, so much movement around her that Clara wasn’t sure what was happening. But she knew that it was Rose’s hands finishing unbuckling the leather straps around her ankles, that Rose said that Richard and Jimmy were fine. Rose, in all the years they had known each other, had never lied to her. Her father lied all the time.

At first she thought she was dreaming, because she heard Richard’s footfall, but as it got closer she tried to force her eyes open in the light and realized he was standing in front of her. She tried to take a deep breath but it felt like she had been swimming and her chest was filled with water, but her hands still reached out and ran lightly over the tweed of jacket.

His green tweed jacket, because he was real and he was here. Clara tried to stand up and felt his arms go around her as her feet refused to face the right direction. Somewhere she heard Rose giving out to some poor soul in her very best nurse voice. Clara shuddered, remembering other nurse voices and felt Richard’s grasp tighten and his breath against her face.

“Clara,” he whispered and she sagged against him.

“Take me away,” Clara whispered, shaking from the feeling of cold that wouldn’t go away.

Suddenly Jimmy was on her other side. “You look like hell,” he told her with a smirk. 

It was Clara’s attempt to smile that reignited Jimmy’s fury. Clara had looked bad when she found him at Walter Reed, but not like this. She looked destroyed.

Richard wanted to pick her up and take her away from all of these people. But he knew Clara wouldn’t want more of a scene than necessary, so he got his arm around and tried walking with her. 

“My legs aren’t listening,” Clara said.

Jimmy got on her other side and between the two of them they half-carried her from the courthouse.

Nucky silently watched them leave, Clara’s little band of misfits tightly around her, his last chance at salvaging her future gone. He knew how stubborn she was. She’d never leave Harrow now, and getting rid of him was going to be more complicated.

Fallon stopped at the payphone to check in with his office before he hopped the first damn train he could get on to get away from the Thompson clan. The first message the stenographer shared was that he was supposed to call Arnold Rothstein.

"AR?" he said when he placed another call.

"Tell me everything about Thompson and his wayward children," Rothstein demanded.

* * *

Jimmy looked in the backseat where Clara was sitting in Richard’s lap and he wasn’t sure who was holding who more tightly. Clara was still shivering, and Richard had wrapped her in his suit jacket, but the way she was acting it was like she was feeling January instead of this miserably humid August afternoon.

“Clara do you know what happened?” Jimmy asked, ignoring the look Rose shot him.

“My father did it. He said you and Richard were…” Clara’s voice caught and she couldn’t continue.

“I know,” Jimmy replied. 

“Tommy?” Clara asked next.

“He’s fine,” Rose answered, which surprised her. “He’s with my grandmother and Dorothy in Cape May. And I have your rings, I got them from that despicable nurse who brought you in.” 

“Do you know why?” Jimmy asked Clara.

Clara shook her head, unaware she hadn’t answered out loud.

“Your grandfather Jeffries, he left you money, Clara. He left you most of his estate, and it was to be yours when you turned twenty-five or when you married.”

Clara closed her eyes. Her grandfather, home from Arizona where he lived in the winter because of his lungs. _You’ll always be taken care of, Pumpkin. You’ll always be the princess of this castle_.

“Father said he left it to build the YMCA,” Clara said, trying to think back through her life.

“Just some,” Jimmy answered. “Nuck, he took your money and I guess panicked when you got married before he expected you too.”

She lay her head against Richard’s shoulder. “Did Grampa leave me his house?”

Fuck, Jimmy thought. Clara loved that house. “I think so, but Clara, it’s all gone now.”

Not the important things, Clara thought, but the thought of her grandfather’s house ripped off an emotional scab.

The rest of the ride was silent. When they got to the beach house, Rose waited until Richard got Clara out of the backseat and pulled her close.

“You are going to be fine. You are going to go inside with your tall husband and let him take care of you. I’ll come see you in a couple of days and we’ll drink many cups of tea and we will talk about everything.”

Clara tried to smile normally. “Thank you, Rose, for everything.”

“Thank you. Mmm. Lady Rose,” Richard said.

“I’ll see you both soon.”

Jimmy started in after them, but felt a hand on his forearm. 

“I’m just going help him get her settled, and then I’ll drive you back to Cape May.”

Rose smiled at him. “She doesn’t need our help right now. She needs her husband. She’ll need us too, later, tomorrow, in the days ahead. But right now she just needs her husband, and you need to go get your son.”  
  



	32. ...Another Thing to Fall (August 1921)

**August 1921**

“I smell like that place,” Clara whispered, still wrapped in his jacket as they went up the stairs even though the house, to him, was stifling.

“Do you want. A bath?”

Clara shook her head adamantly, almost losing her precarious balance. “No!”

He reached out to steady her as they stepped into the second floor and directed her towards the bathroom. Richard tried to keep from staring at the red and purple ring of raw flesh around her neck. Something had been said about water treatment, and now he wished he’d asked Rose what that meant. The dark bruises around her wrists and ankles could have only come from restraints. They tied her down, and she'd fought against them. The discoloration was worse on her right arm, the bruising fading to green around her forearm. For a moment, he saw broken yellow blisters instead of fresh bruises and closed his eyes to push away the delusion and focus on his wife.

Turning the shower on as hot as it would go he turned back to help her when he heard a button hit the floor as she fumbled undoing her blouse.

Yes, Clara thought as her blouse fell to the floor, now Richard was the last person who undressed her, instead of some nurse preparing her for the next horror. It could all be washed away, she determined, and then they could go to bed, and then she would sleep and it would fade into something that happened to her once.

Stumbling into the shower Clara let the hot water pour over her. She braced against the tile wall in an attempt to stay upright, fighting to keep her legs going out from underneath her. She closed her eyes and stepped into the spray, hoping the hot water would drive away the cold. Drive away the smell. It felt like the antiseptic stench of the sanitarium was embedded in her flesh.

The shower curtain opened and she felt Richard slide in behind her. That was quick, she thought, but she was aware time was still vague in her mind. His fingertip trailed slightly down the inside of her arm, making her shiver in a different way. Then she heard the twist of the metal cap of her shampoo bottle before his hands descended into her hair. She closed her eyes and leaned back a little. Much better than washing her own, she thought dreamily as his fingertips worked across her scalp, and then he guided her head under the water. Wooziness hit her again, and he caught her and wrapped an arm around her ribs.

“Mmm. Are you okay?” he whispered into her ear.

Clara nodded. She wasn’t sure how he managed to get her bar of orange soap in his hand, but although it felt odd to let someone else wash her-they'd never done that before-she relaxed into the feeling of the soap working across her body, finally leaning back against him. Suddenly he stepped back.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her hand reaching out for the wall to steady herself as she turned around.

Richard wouldn’t look up at her.

“It’s not the. Time,” he answered.

“Stop acting like I’m made of glass!” Clara snapped as she realized why he moved away. The exhaustion, the drugs, the fear, combined to overwhelm her reticence. “Why are you afraid to want me?”

He shook his head. “Clara. I…”

Still braced against the wall Clara clumsily lowered herself to her knees. Things were going to be normal, she thought. They had to be normal, and she'd do what she must to find normalcy.

The element of surprise worked in her favor. She ran her tongue along the underside of his cock, feeling it jerk against her face before opening her mouth and slowly sliding her mouth over the crown. Hearing him gasp, she put her hand on the back of his leg and pulled him more firmly into her mouth.

It wasn’t something she would say to anyone-not even Rose (who explained to her what French style was, one night in a tent erected behind a Belgian field hospital), not even Richard-but she quite enjoyed it. She liked the idea that she could push him past his inhibitions until he made quite delectable noises and would start moving without realizing it. The first time he’d spent at least a minute telling her she didn’t have to do it, and then unconsciously thrust into her mouth and bumped against the back of her throat, making her gag.

Clara had to suppress a giggle when she remembered the five minutes he’d spent apologizing. Now she could feel his hands hovering over the top of her head like he was fighting an urge to push her head down further.

Well, she had no such scruples holding her back. She repositioned her tongue along the underside of his cock and breathed out through her nose. The water beating down on her back was cooling and for a moment she lost her bearings as the coldness came back. Leaning forward, she breathed the smell of him and tried to stay in the moment as she pulled him closer.

“Mmm. Stop,” Richard managed to get out as he put his hands under her arms. “I, mmm…”

He pulled them back under the water, but the cold was settling back over her and her teeth started to chatter in the now lukewarm water. He helped her over the lip of the tub and wrapped a towel around her.

She wanted to yell at him to stop. Stop being nice. Stop taking care of her before all the tenderness brought out all the feelings she was trying to suppress. There was no reason to cry, she reminded herself, everything was fine. Her father was a fucking liar who stole from her and told her Richard was dead, but that was then and now she was standing here with him and everything was fine. Fine.

But if he treated her like she was fragile, she would shatter.

Clara was drawn to the mirror over the dresser when she stumbled back into their room, her finger going around her neck, feeling the damaged flesh, and then she saw the marks on her wrist reflected in the mirror.

The memory came unbidden, and with such force, it left her dizzy. Her mother's wrists ripped open and bright red as she lay on the bathroom floor. Her mother's face, pale and still.

Clara stared hard at her reflection.

She never admitted all the parts of her that were her mother, because she refused to accept there was enough of her mother in her to determine her fate. It was a Pandora's box whose lid she resisted opening.

Normally, she maintained control over the forbidden areas of her mind. But not now, when every thought and feeling was a jumble that moved like a fast-flowing stream, circumventing all her means of control.

Her eyes, they were from her father. Her coloring, Grandmother Eleanor. But the rest...

Clara, for a very long time, refused to see it. Not in the way her ears were shaped. Not in the way her mouth thinned out towards the corners. Not in the curve of her cheek. Not in the way her eyebrows knitted together when she worried. Not in the way her hand twisted her skirt when she was nervous. Not in the way she smoothed Tommy's hair back from his forehead.

Richard's movements were reflected in the mirror and caught her gaze. Who knew, she considered, that she was capable of loving someone so much? The people she loved she loved as best she could, but she knew her love was never quite enough. Uncle Eli's disappointment that affection for her cousins didn't flow naturally. Her father's annoyance that she couldn't just accept Margaret and her children as family.

She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't believed that her mother would stop being sad if Clara just loved her enough.

 _Your grandfather, he didn't want your mother to marry your father,_ Eli had told her the night of the ball.

Of course, she had known that she had some of her mother's personality, her intellect, her interests. But Clara had always thought that it was she, that it was all her doomed siblings who never quite grasped onto life, had destroyed her mother's spirit. All that grief for the lost ones. All the not-enoughness of Clara. That's what had doomed her mother. That's what the rhythm to which her mind had beat since she was eight years old.

But once, this woman whose mouth smiled in the same way hers did, was as determined as Clara. Because once, her mother had loved her father fiercely. So fiercely she battled with Grandpa Jeffries over him. Clara had loved her grandfather, but that didn't mean that even as a child she hadn't sensed that he was not a man to cross.

A wave of grief cascaded over her for her mother. Different from all the grieving, both experienced fully and buried deeply, Clara had done over the last fifteen years. It wasn't even the lonely longing she'd experienced so often.

It was a fully formed adult grief, singed with anger both for her mother's abandonment and what led up to it as memories from throughout Clara's life ricocheted off this new emotional reckoning in no particular order, but leaving the feeling that Clara wasn't quite seeing something right in front of her.

The familiar sound of tin against wood followed by the lighter sound of the metal of the dog tags being placed on the side table knocked her from her reverie. Clara shivered at the sound and turned to stare.

He felt the weight of her stare and automatically turned to check on her. Her look of barely suppressed horror made him instinctively reach for the mask. She was scared and medicated, he reasoned, his face was more than she could deal with now.

Clara saw his hand reach for the mask. "No, please don't. It's...my father. He had your dog tags, when he…" she swallowed around the words she couldn't bring herself to say. "And I didn’t believe him, not exactly, but I couldn’t keep my mind from picturing what he was saying. That you were in a ditch.”

Slowly he moved his hand away from the mask, torn between wanting to hide behind it and wanting to be with her in their usual way. Clara's fingers were twisting into the damp strands of her hair as she stared blankly at him, knitting them into knots. Her skin was still bright with red splotches from the hot water of the shower, but still she shivered in the warm room.

Not even in the moments after the d'Alessio attack, not in the worst of her grief over Angela, not when she thought he had known about the attempt on her father's life, had he seen her look like this.

Like she was absolutely coming undone from the inside. He knew he needed to fix her, but he didn't know how to take that look from her eyes. If Nucky Thompson had appeared in front of him at that moment he could have ripped the man limb from limb.

The idea of twisting her hair bothered her so much it kept her from bobbing her hair for ages. He picked up the scarf she wore to bed and carefully tied it so that her hair was back from her face, and her hand fell to her side.

It was the least he could do since he had failed her.

He looked down at her shoulder. “I didn’t. Know where you were. Mmm. I thought. The Butcher had. You. I didn’t know what he would. Do.”

“I’m fine,” she whispered.

“It’s my job. To protect you.”

Clara lifted her head, for the first time considering what her disappearance had inflicted on him. There was nothing about this that didn't hurt, but the look on Richard's face inflicted new agony. His eye was unnaturally bright. His mouth usually relaxed when he took off the mask, but the right side still quivered and curled like it did when he was upset. Her father hurt Richard, Clara realized. Beyond whatever horrid plan her father had attempted, just the taking of her was enough to hurt Richard.

Her fingertip traced the side of his mouth. So familiar, she thought, that exact blend of skin and mustache and stubble, like her fingers had brushed against his face for years. Blindfolded, in a life filled with countless others, she thought she could find him by the sound of his breathing, the echo of his footsteps, the weight of his touch on her arm, or the smell of his skin. It's why she hadn't believed her father. If he wasn't here on Earth with her, there's no way she wouldn't feel his absence. Clara smiled at this but of ridiculous romanticism, but then decided they’d been married less than a month. She was supposed to indulge in romanticism. Like the idea he was a part of her she had known and lost and never expected to find again, the smell and sense of him so familiar even though he was a stranger, like in Chicago when he felt so comfortable from the beginning.

She forced herself back into the present.

“You do. You will. But you can’t protect me from the things that made up my life before I ever met you.”

“You know. That I want. You,” he said against her hair so he didn’t have to meet her gaze. "It why. I stopped you."

Ah, Clara realized, then help me chase this pain away. She turned to press her mouth against the healthy side of his. As they fell on the bed she did her best to push every thought from her mind and focus only on the sensations. On her need to have and be had, and reassure herself on her most primal level that they were alive and together.

She lost herself in the familiar push and pull of taking each other to the edge and backing off again. When he pulled away from her she whimpered from confusion until she saw him reach for the drawer of his bedside table.

Oh god, she hadn't thought to put in her Dutch cap. "Thank you for remembering," she whispered as he ripped open the french letter.

And then he was on top of her again, and she fell away from Atlantic City back into her jumbled memories. For one panicked moment, it felt like she couldn't open her eyes. She could feel the bandages Rose applied in a desperate attempt to save her eyesight wrapped around her head.

She needed this, she needed this man, and through the adrenaline and fear coursing through her she didn't doubt her choice, even if she never thought her first time would be under a table in a war zone with someone incapable of kissing her because of his bandages. Even if she never expected her first time to take place in the shadow of her probable death.

A familiar hand brushed across her face, pushing the errant scarf off her face and back into her hair. Clara gasped. Just a memory just a memory just a memory she told herself. That was then, and now it was Memorial Day and she'd missed him and thought something was wrong. Then they fought, and something still bothered her because he had promised and that last kiss before she left had been wrong but then he wanted her and she wanted him and...no, she thought, no. That was earlier, but what had been wrong, what had she forgotten?

Her sudden lack of response made him lift his head from her neck. The scarf had come loose and was over her eyes and he brushed it back without thinking, but it was the bruises around her wrists that made him stop.

Of course, he thought, she'd been tied down. Being pressed into the bed by the weight of his body was restraining her, he was making it worse.

Clara wasn't certain why Richard suddenly flipped them so he was sitting up in bed and she was in his lap, but it pulled her back into the moment.

Oh, she thought as she realized how different it felt like this, oh.

And then she stopped thinking.

Afterward, she drifted back and forth between deeply asleep and semi-consciousness but was mostly suspended in drugged half-consciousness as the medicine kept working through her system. Sometimes she thought she was awake, but then realized she was falling into another pocket of half-recalled memory or into a nightmare fueled by her deepest fears. Sometimes they blended so that her mother's body on the bathroom floor turned to Richard's or when she saw her brother's hand it wasn't the small hand of an infant but instead was Jimmy's familiar hand turned to bleached bone.

She finally stirred awake. For a moment she feared the feeling of his skin pressed against hers was just an illusion, that she was really still in that place. But no, she decided. She was laying in an odd position because she'd simply pitched forward and fallen asleep when they had finished. Even though it was vaguely uncomfortable for her and she feared miserable for him, she didn't want to move. Thirst finally drove her to seek the carafe on the bedside table. She couldn't remember how many days ago they'd filled it.

His hand reached for her hip as she leaned away.

"I'm so sorry, that couldn't have been comfortable for you," Clara said as they lay back down after finishing the water.

He pulled her closer. "Mmm. I've slept for. Ten minutes at a time. In a tree. Anywhere with you. Is better." They were silent, the only sound that of their breathing and the wind coming off the ocean.

"I don't think. We can stay. In Atlantic City," he said, running his fingers along her back. "I don't think. Jimmy can stay. Either."

No, Clara thought, we can not. Everyone has to decide for themselves how much sin they can live with. That's what her father always said. But suddenly Clara grasped how it was possible to think the line was one place, only to realize you'd long since crossed it. She had done things that the girl she was just a few years ago would never even conceive of. It could eat away at you, Clara thought, until nothing remained and she unconsciously tightened her grip on her husband.

"It's time for a new life. We all need to leave. I don't care if we end up in a boarding house, anything is better than staying here, staying in this life."

It was easy for her to say that, Richard thought. Clara had never worried where her next dollar was coming from. He didn't want to reduce her circumstances beyond what she found bearable. He wanted her happy and safe.

But there are things I have to do first, Clara realized, trying to focus on making some sort of plan to leave Atlantic City behind them. She had to know, and there was only one person to ask.

She raised her head up off his chest. “I need a favor. You aren’t going to like it.”

* * *

Clara checked her wristwatch as the automobile slowed. It was only seven, but the sky was already darkening. Maybe, she thought, it would rain and break this awful heat. Even before, before she went away, the days had stretched on hot and oppressive.

“I don’t. See. Mmm. Why you need,” Richard began.

Clara squeezed his hand. “I know. But I…” she closed her eyes. “I keep my thoughts very orderly. On purpose. Sometimes, something happens, like you and they go in ways I never meant but still...I keep them orderly. I keep them orderly on purpose. But the medicine, and being in that place, my thoughts and memories are all jumbled. The jumble is making me look at things in a new way, making me reconsider what I think I know about everything. It's the difference between standing on the Boardwalk and looking down at the Boardwalk from the top of the Ferris Wheel. Standing on the Boardwalk, you see things in linear order. The Chop Suey restaurant has nothing to do with Formica Brothers. But from Ferris Wheel, you realize there's a back alley that connects them."

Richard nodded, thinking of the difference between standing on a grassy field with a rifle looking for the enemy and then the view from the tree.

A fat raindrop hit the windshield.

"And she’s the only person I can ask about some of it," Clara said before leaning over the kiss his cheek and open the car door.

He watched his wife climb the marble stairs and knock on the door of the deceased Commodore's mansion. 

* * *

The sound of the knocker echoed through the marble foyer of the mansion. Gillian roused herself from the divan, where she lay reading _The Good Bad Girl._ Being alone was not Gillian's preferred state of being. The excitement of the men coming over to confer with Jimmy, spending time with Jimmy, playing with Tommy, feeling Charlie Luciano's eyes on her whenever he entered the house... that's what Gillian preferred.

Last night she'd felt like the loneliest person in the whole world. Jimmy hadn't been by in days, so she'd gone down to the Blenheim. The young man in the lobby reminded her of Jimmy, of course, but also of Charlie. He looked so much like Jimmy with his floppy blond hair and soft pouty lips, but the power and ambition that hummed through his young, hard body was all Charlie Touching him was like putting a damp finger over a live socket.

Perhaps the person at the door was that delightful boy, Mr. Bud Matheson, coming to pay a proper call.

Gillian smoothed her hair as she glided towards the door.

“Clara,” Gillian said, hardly believing who stood on her portico.

Gillian stepped aside, silently assessing her as she walked in. A white and blue pinafore dress clearly meant to be worn at home and certainly not when out in the evening. The bob, which Gillian had to admit suited her, looked like Clara hadn’t bothered to brush it. The engagement ring on her left hand was pretty enough, Gillian supposed, but certainly not as impressive as the one Clara wore when she was intended for Darcy Blaine.

“Well, my dear, I can tell two things just by looking at you. That odd husband of yours must be talented in areas I never expected because you look well-bedded. It's often the quiet ones, isn't it? " Gillian stepped closer, her head tilting as she regarded the bruises on Clara's beck, wrists, and ankles. "However, I certainly wouldn't have expected him to tie you down and choke you quite yet."

"My father had me kidnapped off Jimmy's porch and tossed into an insane asylum," Clara said, struggling to keep her voice level.

"Why did no one bring me Tommy?" Gillian cried.

"A friend of mine watched him, Jimmy thought he'd be safer out of Atlantic City." Clara studied Gillian, and saw the barely repressed rage. "Gillian, I know you are angry at me."

"Whatever gave you that impression? When you set it up so that Leander thought I killed the dear Commodore? When you took Tommy from his grandmother's care and manipulated Jimmy into thinking I'm not fit to be around my grandson?"

She was there to ask Gillian to tell her the truth, and that meant she could not force Gillian to look at the truth of why Clara refused to allow her near Tommy. But she had to make Gillian see.

"Listen to me, Gillian. My father had me committed. He got me out of the way. And then he came to a room where I had been tortured, where I was tied down to a bed, and told me Richard and Jimmy were dead. No one knew where I was. It was happenstance that they figured out where I was, that Leander was able to free me. But that doesn't mean my father won't attempt the rest of his plan. You must understand this-Father is planning on killing Jimmy and Richard."

Gillian gasped and turned away. "Clara, you are hysterical. Nucky would never. He loves Jimmy like a son, he's always viewed him as..."

"You convinced Jimmy to order a hit on my father. That rather changed the father/son dynamic. This wasn't a game. There are consequences."

Tommy could be hers, Gillian thought. Clara would have no claim. Bud Matheson would make a good father, they could raise the boy the way she wanted to...

But Jimmy...how could she live in a world without her sweet James?

Clara watched Gillian's face closely. "Also understand this. No matter what happens, I will never let Tommy fall back into your clutches. Tommy's childhood will be different than Jimmy's."

Gillian looked at her with real hatred, but her voice was still bright and polite. "Since you have all the answers, Clara, why are you here?"

"I don't have many tools available to me to stop my Father. And it's made worse by the fact I don't really know everything, do I?"

"Has James not taken you into his confidence?" Gillian breathed out, happy to think Jimmy hadn't turned over all his secrets to Clara.

"Gillian, I know Jimmy's perspective. I know my own. But this whole catastrophe didn't start when we came home from the war, or at the start of Prohibition, or even the day I watched my mother bleed out on the bathroom floor, did it? And you are the only one who I can ask..." she swallowed hard. "About my mother. About what happened back in 1897."

Gillian's smile was cold. "You fool everyone, don't you Clara? That sweet little rich girl routine. But you are just like your father. You decide what is best for everyone and we are all expected to bend to your will."

Clara nodded. "You might very well be correct. But maybe I'm also someone tired of all of the lies. Gillian, I had no idea what my father did to you. I knew the Commodore was too old to have fathered a child on you. I knew you were too young to be Jimmy's mother. But I didn't know my father's part in it, I didn't. And since I found out, that's how I've thought about it. My father's part in the abhorrent thing these men did to you."

She smiled up at Gillian. "But now I'm married. And there are nights when Richard comes home from, from working with Jimmy and I know. I just know. It's in the set of his shoulders, it's in the way he lays next to me. And with us..." Clara's voice broke, unwilling to expose that part of their lives to Gillian.

"So I thought you could tell me what my mother thought the first time my father climbed into bed next to her after he sold you to the Commodore."

* * *

No one had thought to dispose of the lunch Clara was making when she was taken. The smell and the flies attracted by the rotten food were equally abhorrent. Richard resolutely started clearing the rotten food so he could put the kitchen back to rights, so he could make something for them both to eat. He couldn't remember when he last ate and doubted Clara could either.

He turned the idea of Clara needing to speak to Gillian over and over in his head. Clara's relationship with Gillian was inexplicable to him. And then Clara had setup Gillian to take the blame for the Commodore's death to protect Jimmy, and did it like it was just another errand she needed to contend with. She'd taken Tommy and refused to even consider letting Gillian near the boy.

Why. Clara loved Tommy. He'd seen that the first time he met Tommy. It was when he was guarding Clara and as they walked down the Boardwalk a small shape in cap came running out of a store and barreled straight into Clara and she'd laughed as she picked the boy up. It had even been in her voice when she talked about him that day in Chicago.

But by her own words, she loved spoiling Tommy and passing him back to Angela when he became difficult. And although he knew she was doing her best, although he tried to help as much as he could, he also knew she struggled with suddenly becoming the person tasked with caring for Tommy. Clara had told him several times she wanted children-their children-but not yet. She didn't want to have children in this life, she wanted to have adventures, she wanted time with them alone together, she wanted to have time to write.

A small part of him was ashamed of how much he enjoyed caring for Tommy. Coming home to find Tommy sideways on the bed with Clara and carrying him back to his own room. Doing the voices of the Martian when Clara read Tommy a space story.

Somehow from the ruins of Angela and Jimmy's lives, he had gained everything he had ever wanted. Although he knew it wouldn't last. Jimmy would reign himself in soon and take responsibility for Tommy. Jimmy was a good man, a good father. He was certainly a good friend. Every good thing in his life Richard had because Jimmy had been kind enough to answer him when he spoke in that hospital hallway back in Chicago. It was his duty to make sure Jimmy survived this and to watch over Tommy until Jimmy recovered from...Well.

Richard heard Jimmy’s car pull up over the sound of the wind and the rain, which now howled outside, and walked into the living room to greet them. A few minutes later Tommy burst through the door ahead of his father, shaking water from his cap as he raced into the house.

“Richard, I stayed with an old lady and we ate fish eggs!”

The sound of Tommy's feet and voice felt like a warm wave of normalcy washing over her as she swam back up from the depths of another unplanned nap. Clara sat up on the sofa, adjusting the scarf holding her hair back, her annoyance at falling asleep swept away by relief in the confirmation that Tommy was fine, and finally letting going of the terror she'd first felt when...for a moment she was back in the kitchen and was happy to see the man on the porch but her mind wouldn't let her form a picture of who stood there, a danger to both she and Tommy.

“Tommy, I’m so glad…” Clara began as she joined them in the entryway.

“You left me,” Tommy said, stepping away from Clara, his little face twisted in anger. “You yelled game and never came back.”

“Tommy,” Richard began. “Clara…”

“No, it’s okay,” Clara cut in. “Tommy, I’m so, so sorry you were scared.”

Tommy moved behind Richard’s legs and refused to come out.

“Tommy, it’s not Clara’s fault,” Jimmy said but stopped speaking when it looked like Tommy was about to start crying.

“I’m hungry, Richard,” Tommy declared.

Richard looked up at Clara, who looked like she'd just been slapped. Jimmy nodded towards Clara, and Tommy was pulling at Richard's hand, so he shepherded the boy into the kitchen.

Clara silently moved back to the sofa. Fuck Father, she thought furiously, and fuck whoever snatched her and terrorized that poor little boy who already been through so much.

Jimmy watched Tommy climb into a chair. Jesus, Richard was patient. Cooking was bad enough, letting Tommy help was practically torture. Silently he went to sit next to Clara, his eyes taking in her injuries. Those bruises. Jesus. Fucking Nucky.

He lit a cigarette and handed it to her, sitting silently for a moment. When Rose told him to leave Clara alone with Richard, it felt wrong. Clara was family, and so was Richard. They were his. The idea that they could fix each other, but only if he let them alone felt wrong.

“We thought the Butcher had you. We went after him,” Jimmy finally said, not looking directly at her. He needed her to know what they had done, what they had been willing to do, to get her back.

Clara nodded, remembering Richard’s words that he had feared the Butcher had taken her.

“Did you get him?” she asked, not looking over at him, but willing to ask Jimmy to tell her things she couldn’t bring herself to ask her husband.

“Yes,” Jimmy answered, staring at the cigarette as Clara passed it back to him.

Clara cleared her throat. “You, or Richard?”

Jimmy looked up at her, surprised. “Both. We found him while we looked for you.”

“No, I mean...trench knife or a Colt 1903?”

“Trench knife.”

A start, Clara thought, but still not what she wanted to know. “Did he pay for Angela?”

Jimmy took a long drag and looked at her out of the corner of his eye, realizing what Clara was actually asking. “He screamed, Clara.”

Clara clasped his free hand. For a man like the Butcher to scream? Jimmy was more skilled with that damn knife than she had presumed. “Good,” she said softly.

There was so much packed into that one word that Jimmy flinched at the implication. This wasn't how it was supposed to be, he thought. How the fuck had they gotten so off course? And there were still more people who needed to pay.

"Do you remember who took you?" Jimmy asked.

Clara shook her head. "No, the whole morning is a blur."

A knock sounded at the door, startling them both. Jimmy silently left the couch, pulling the Glock from his waistband as he moved as stealthily as possible-his bum leg always acted up in the rain-so he could see the driveway and porch.

A stocky man sat behind the wheel of a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, just like Torrio's. But it wasn't Al behind the wheel, and it wasn't anyone from Chicago standing on his porch. The threesome on the porch was easily identifiable. The little man built like an ox holding an umbrella over a slightly taller and much better-dressed man whose face, even in shadow, was carefully composed into blank pleasantness. And standing over them was a taller man with his head slightly bent and a hand brushing near his waistband.

Richard came out from the kitchen, his hand on Tommy's shoulder, and Jimmy nodded at him to look out the window.

“Tommy. Go to Clara,” Richard instructed when he saw who was outside.

“I…”

“Mmm. Now.” Richard instructed and Tommy finally went without arguing as Jimmy opened the door.

"Gentlemen," Rothstein said and swept into the house without having exactly being asked when Jimmy opened the door.

"Harrow," Luciano said with a nod before he walked, Richard noted, straight over to Clara. Tommy backed up to stand against Clara as Charlie approached them.

"At some point," Lansky said to Richard with a half-smirk when he saw that the man was watching Charlie and Clara, "we will have to let them know they are actually friends."

"Congratulations, both on your marriage and on recovering your wife," Rothstein said with a smile Richard thought was probably supposed to be ingratiating. "I trust you've made plans to get her away from Atlantic City, away from Thompson?"

Richard swallowed.

"Ah, well. Marrying a woman like Clara Thompson, it's a complicated endeavor. A delight, to be sure, but it is hard to imagine her in a cold-water tenement or some remote farm. She's used to a certain standard of living. And of course, you want her to be happy, and safe. Keeping Nucky Thompson's daughter safe is a daunting proposition. Not only do you have to worry about Thompson's enemies-and it does appear to be his special talent to make new enemies the way other men make friends-but now you know Thompson is a danger to Clara. And how can you keep her safe from her own father? Especially here, in the town Thompson considers his private fiefdom?"

Rothstein watched Richard closely as he spoke. Evaluating men's reactions to his words, his promises, his offers was one of Rothstein's strengths but he did have to admit it was a little more difficult with Harrow. The man was practically inscrutable. Rothstein liked that about him. But those hands, those fingers rubbing together, those were his tell. Rothstein also liked knowing that.

"I admire your loyalty to Darmody. And of course, Thompson is an even great danger to him than he is to Clara. That's why I propose this. Come to New York. Peter is my main bodyguard, of course, but I need someone like you. Meyer tells me you have quite the head for logistics, for organizing groups of men, for making things work. And there are your other very useful skills. I'll pay you $500 a week, plus more for certain jobs, and provide a three-bedroom apartment in my building at 144 West 57th Street. It's a beautiful apartment. Clara will like it. And it comes with doormen and elevator men who will fall under your purview."

Sometimes the trick was to know when to stop talking. He followed Harrow's eye. The Darmody boy clung to Clara while Charlie had moved to talk to Darmody. Charlie's report was correct. Darmody's son had somehow become Harrow and Clara's responsibility. What a deliciously complicated arrangement these young people had constructed.

"You'll never again have to worry that harm will come to them while you are working. They'll be safe under the watch of men of your choosing. If you ever feel the need to have them protected outside of the home that of course can be arranged.

"Clara will love being a young wife of means in the city. Being around other writers, her friends from school and college...she's meant for better things than Atlantic City. She can entertain in your apartment. And you can be the one who gives her that. Meanwhile, Darmody can work for Meyer and Charlie. They have their...fingers in all sorts of pies."

Clara would love living in New York, Richard knew. She spoke fondly of her time there with Angela, she'd been happy on their trip. And it would allow him to work, to support her without worrying that marrying him was causing her to go without. It would let him get Jimmy and Clara out of Atlantic City, to keep Tommy with them while Jimmy found his way, to repay the enormous debt of gratitude he felt for Jimmy.

And if Rothstein looked at him exactly the way his cousin Harold used to look at butterflies he planned on pinning to a board? So be it. Everything in life carried a price.

Another knock sounded at the door. Charlie and Jimmy stopped their conversation. Richard watched Clara smooth Tommy's hair back from his forehead as she drew the boy closer to her. She caught his eye and tried to smile.

Rothstein stepped into the shadows, while Meyer and Richard wordlessly coordinated covering the door.

Nucky and Eli Thompson stood on the porch.

“We come with a peace offering,” Nucky said with practiced ease as Richard opened the door. Ever since goddamn Leader Whitlock had interfered and got Clara out of the sanitarium where she might not have been comfortable but where he at least knew she was safe. Owen Sleater had failed to find the Butcher. No one was living up to their obligations, and Nucky did not appreciate having to come up with a new plan on the fly. Especially when it meant depending on Eli for security and support for this, the most important part of his plan to reclaim his city and his daughter.

"Arnold?" he then said, after spotting Rothstein and Lansky standing with Harrow, and Luciano in the living room with James, Clara, and the boy. The New York contingent in James's living room was not a happy surprise.

"Paying a social call," Rothstein said smoothly.

"Come on in, Nuck. No need to haunt the doorway," Jimmy instructed from the living room, his eyes glinty and hard.

Nucky nodded and stepped forward, the water collected on the brim of his hat cascading to the floor unnoticed when he removed his hat.

Eli stood silently but took in the scene in front of him. Clara looked like Mabel, sitting there with the Darmody brat in her lap. Jesus, Eli thought when she turned to smile hesitantly at him and he saw the bruises on Clara's neck. What did they do to her in that place?

“Owen has captured Manny Horwitz, I knew that Jimmy would want to know," Nucky continued.

Richard looked at Jimmy upon hearing this but was surprised to see Clara also shoot Jimmy a glance.

Luciano every so slightly nodded his head at Lansky.

Nucky was so focused on spinning his tale and achieving his objective of getting Richard and Jimmy to go with them to the Soldier's Memorial that he missed the quiet reaction to his words. Eli fell back into his role as Nucky's silent support easily, surprised at the comfortable feeling of being in his brother's shadow once more.

No one was looking at Tommy, who had climbed down from Clara's lap.

"Oww! God damn it kid, why did you do that?" Eli cried out suddenly, causing everyone to look at him. And to Tommy, who was kicking Eli with all his four-year-old might.

Clara stood and moved to grab the boy.

"You are the bad man!" Tommy yelled, kicking Eli once more in the shin.

"Uncle Eli," Clara breathed out, refusing to believe it even as the missing pieces began to fall into place.

Clara was a child of the Boardwalk, and Nucky had not been unaware of the importance of having his little daughter pictured in the papers enjoying new Boardwalk attractions the day they opened. Sheriff's daughter had morphed into Treasurer's daughter and still she had dipped and spun on every new ride, thrown endless balls to win endless games, admired countless new sideshow exhibits. She liked most of them, but she hated the Whirligig. The feeling of spinning while the world dropped out from underneath her was not a sensation she enjoyed.

Standing in the beach house living room she felt that sensation again. Making ham sandwiches. Hearing the knock at the door. Smiling when she saw his face. She was spinning through her memories and dropped harshly into the reality of who betrayed her, of who took her from her life and threw her into hell.

"Dollface," Eli said pleadingly.

The spinning feeling dissipated, and Clara crossed the space between them so quickly that neither Jimmy who was standing behind her nor Richard who stood behind Eli had any chance of getting to her. Her body twisted as she moved, and she put her entire weight into her arm. Eli saw it coming he didn't try to avoid it.

The sound of her palm striking his face echoed through the house, even as the wind and rain of the summer storm howled through the windows.

"They shoved a needle in me and someone tied my arms and you just stood there. Patted my knee ineffectively, like you trying were to comfort me as you were delivering me to that place!"

Jimmy stepped up behind Clara, so Richard grabbed Tommy and moved him to the hallway. "Go upstairs. To your room."

Tommy looked terrified as he stepped onto the staircase. "I don't want to play the game."

"No. Not the game. Just upstairs."

"Because Clara is going hit that bad man again?"

"You know, my father deciding to torture me because I dared disobey him...well, I can...it makes sense," Clara sputtered. "But you! You stood next to me back in January and told me you knew how awful this year was going to be, but that if I loved Richard I should do something about it. You made sure I knew that Richard wasn't involved in Jimmy's stupid fucking assassination attempt."

"I didn't have a choice..."

How fucking dare she, Nucky thought, show this kind of disrespect in front of his business associates. "Clara, that will be enough! We will not air our family's dirty laundry in front of Mr. Rothstein and his associates. I just came to collect Jimmy and Harrow because there's business..."

Clara turned, and the dazed expression was gone, replaced by white-hot fury. "Ah, yes! You have Manny Horwitz. Tell me, Father, how did you manage such a miracle?"

Luciano let his hand drop down to his waist, near his gun. All these Atlantic City fuckers made Benny look like a damn paragon of sanity. What a stupid fucking plan Thompson concocted, thinking he could tempt Darmody and Harrow by saying he had the Butcher?

"You need to control yourself!"

"Or what? You'll have me committed? Again?"

Although it was delightful to watch this game spin into new and unexpected vistas, Rothstein knew the secret to winning was to control the game. And right now, the game had too many variables. Time to apply his rulebook. "Nucky, it's good that you are here. Mr. Harrow and I have reached an understanding, and I believe Charlie and Mr. Darmody have done the same?"

Clara turned to look at Richard and couldn't stop herself from gasping out loud. She wanted them to be free, for their lives not to be directed by the damn Volstead Act. Rothstein, Charlie, Meyer-that was going further in. Much, much further in. Rothstein was quicksand.

"No!" she cried out, feeling that somehow a battle in a war she didn't know was underway happened while she looked the other way.

"Clara..." he began, and she saw from the way his mouth twitched he didn't see another way.

She dipped and dropped and spun again and had to put her fist over her mouth to push back the wave of nausea.

"There will be no understanding, Arnold. They are not going to New York. There are things to be settled here."

"What needs to be settled that allowing them to remove themselves to New York would accomplish? They'll be under my umbrella. They understand that in New York protocols must be followed. We've secured employment terms for Mr. Darmody and Mr. Harrow, and of course, there is much for Mrs. Harrow to do as well."

Richard's head jerked up. "Clara is. Not a part. Of our arrangement."

"Oh, Mr. Harrow, don't you realize what an asset you've married? You've done what none of the rest of us have managed and married a proper society girl. Carolyn is a darling, but she's never been a bridesmaid at the wedding of the season the way your bride was last May. Mrs. Harrow's social credentials and access are a unique benefit. I'm sure when your marriage announcement runs in _The Times_ her friends will flock to your new apartment."

"No. Clara doesn't need..."

"Unfortunately, our deal doesn't hold unless Mrs. Harrow is willing to take part in a few social engagements," Rothstein said with one eyebrow raised. "Neither does Mr. Darmody's arrangement with Charlie."

Clara made her way to to her husband and squeezed his hand. Her father was out for blood. Every part of her wanted to scream, wanted to run but she could see that Rothstein was offering them safety from her father's vengeance, even if she knew what it was going to cost them. Even as she silently told Richard it was okay, she felt the teeth of the trap ensnare them both.

"Yeah, Nuck, you don't want us here, so why are you opposed to New York?" Jimmy asked, his voice quiet and steady.

"Is it because you need their help with Horwitz?" Clara asked, her voice bright, like she was asking him what refreshments he'd like for a party as Richard's hand tightened around hers.

Nucky looked back and forth between them. Somehow, he wasn't sure how, they had outflanked him. They knew he didn't have Horwitz. Damn it, this is why he'd needed Doyle, who usually popped up like a damn jack in the box whenever he wasn't needed but today was in the god damn wind.

Rothstein stared at him with that cold, amused expression. Nucky's mind spun. He'd wanted to punish Jimmy, dispose of Harrow, and save Clara from her own poor fucking decisions. Now somehow that was all slipping through his fingers. Eli was going to prison. Everyone had to pay. Even these two spoiled fucking golden children and their deformed henchman.

"What's in it for me?" Nucky asked.

Clara laughed out loud. "I must give you this-you don't really hide exactly how craven you are, do you? How about this, Father? My trust fund that you helped yourself to? Consider it ransom to free Richard, Jimmy, and me from your clutches. It's payment for our freedom, for any misdeeds you judge us guilty of committing. I just want one thing in return."

"What an intriguing offer, Nucky." Rothstein offered, amused at the audacity of this little bit of skirt with her pretty manners and cultivated speaking voice offering to ransom her men from her own father.

Nucky gritted his teeth. "What do you want, Clara?"

She lifted her chin and looked her father straight in the eye. "Tell me what whore the money from my grandfather's house went to support."

Rothstein watched the interplay with amusement and satisfaction. Thompson was indeed a bigger fool than even he had first guessed. No matter his anger, one thing was clear. Thompson loved his daughter, and he loved James Darmody. And in his anger, which would fade away, he was about to let them fall straight into Arnold's waiting grasp.

And then the people Nucky loved best would be solidly in Arnold Rothstein's control.

Her father glared at her without answering her question. "None of you can ever return. You are permanently banished from Atlantic City. Beginning tonight."

"This house, my father's estate..." Jimmy began.

"Leander Whitlock falls all over himself helping you two. I'm sure he's more than capable of disposing of this house and seeing to the Commodore's estate."

"I'm sure everyone can agree to that provision, yes?" Rothstein asked. "Wonderful, Meyer, if you will accompany me back to New York, Charlie can stay and assist James and the Harrows prepare for their journey north."

Charlie followed Rothstein and Meyer to the door and then returned to the edge of the living room.

"Shouldn't you all be packing?" Nucky said.

Clara smoothed her skirt and allowed herself to really look at her father. Ever the wealthy benevolent monarch of his seaside kingdom, she thought, but still. A little older, a little greyer. He had everything he'd ever wanted and it wasn't enough. It would never be enough. Her mother could have filled every room with baby Thompsons, she and Jimmy could have stayed home from the war...it didn't matter. Whatever was broken in her father predated all of them, even her mother.

It was just that he kept picking up the jagged pieces and using them to inflict pain on anyone in his life who tried to love him.

"Charlie," Clara said with an attempt at a smile. "Would you do me a favor?"

Charlie absolutely smirked at her, causing her to bite back a laugh and shake her head no. "Would you go check on Tommy?"

"You want me to go check on the kid?" Jesus fuck these people annoyed the hell out of him. He'd already spent the day watching Mickey goddamned Doyle, whom he'd finally left hogtied on the floor of his own warehouse. Someone would find the man tomorrow. Or not. Charlie climbed the stairs with all the energy of a condemned man. Watch a fucking kid. What the hell, the kid had to be better than Doyle.

Jimmy and Richard both stared at her, and she half-shrugged as she turned back to her father. "I owe you my thanks," she said in a level voice. "For the asylum. Because it made me understand things I would have never realized. otherwise."

“My whole life I thought it was my fault. That if I’d been a boy, or if I had been different, then I would have been enough. That it was because of my shortcomings that Mother kept trying for more, that she couldn’t be satisfied, that it was lost baby after lost baby until she..."

"Clara, there is no need to dredge up the past..."

"THERE IS EVERY NEED! Because as I lay there shackled to that bed with your words in my ear that my husband was in a ditch with Jimmy beside him, my mind started to drift into all the forbidden areas. First, of course, let's start with Gillian. Because in the end, it all goes back to that decision, doesn't it, Father? When I heard Jimmy accuse you of handing over a twelve-year-old girl to that horrid old man I can't even describe how sickening I found that. I try to not be a hypocrite. I've known since I was seven years old and Jenny O'Roarke told me that you were the reason she couldn't have a nice winter coat like mine, because you made her parents pay so much 'business tax' it left them with no money for anything else that my pretty life was built on the misery of others."

Nucky's lower lip curled over his teeth at Clara's betrayal of everything he'd fought to give her. "It's so easy to have such high morals when your whole life people were there to hand you anything you wanted, anything you needed..."

"You absolutely correct. I never went without one material need or want. Neither did Mother. You were such a good provider, weren't you, Father? That's why although you were both still young she thought you two were more than capable of adopting Gillian the summer of 1897. She loved Gillian, right from the start, didn't she?"

"I refuse-"

"Do you think it was because she saw this poor kid who none of the advantages she'd been handed, but that was smart as a whip and charming? Do you think that's why she thought you'd be a good father to Gillian, even if you were only twelve years older than Gillian?"

Nucky started towards Clara, just wanting her to stop talking, but James and Harrow standing behind her changed his mind. "None of this has anything to do with you!"

"It has everything to do with me. What is it you say-everyone must decide for themselves how much sin they can live with? Unfortunately, you forgot to take Mother into your calculus. When you brought Gillian back, because the Commodore threw her out because a pregnant, vomiting twelve-year-old isn't very much fun and because you had nowhere else to put her, what did she think? When you climbed in bed next to her, did you wonder about how she felt about the sin that you brought with you? How she could reconcile the man she'd loved since she was just a girl with the person who whored out the child she planned on raising?"

The only sound in the room was the lash of rain beating against the house.

"See, I thought it was me. I thought it was all those poor doomed babies. But-"

"Clara, your brother..."

"You want to talk about that? Let's. Here's another thing I didn't quite grasp as a child. You already knew Mother was unstable. That baby was so, so, so small. And you just...left us. As she rocked a decaying corpse she thought was her baby and I lived off bread, how many hours did you spend at home? Watching Angela with Tommy those first days I understood for the first time how fragile women are right after childbirth. And my mother was more fragile than most. It was her first baby that, that..." Clara's voice broke and for one horrible moment she thought she was going to burst into tears.

"Was born alive since me," she managed to continue. "And still, you left us. What sort of man doesn't hold his baby for a week? Pays so little attention to his wife that he doesn't realize she's caring for a corpse! Even after, when you managed to bury that poor baby what was your response?"

"I hired a housekeeper!"

"Ah, you threw some money at it. What a solution. Tell me-was it a relief? No longer needing to worry about Mother, her moods, no more worrying she'd embarrass you?"

"How dare you, Clara?"

Jimmy silently watched Clara take on Nucky. She deserved it. But Nuck was going to have him killed, and he was tired of apologizing for what happened in June.

"It's true, though, ain't it Nuck? You love a fresh start. Eli's going to the slammer, you've sent Clara and I away. You got a pretty new wife, adorable little kids, nice new house. The Irishman to replace Eli and me, and you pay him so you don't have to worry about his feelings. It's a whole new Nucky Thompson. Like Mabel, and Clara, and me? Like we never happened. Except those little tykes of Mrs. Schroeder's are gonna grow up one day and wonder about their father. Someone will offer Irish more money. What will you do then?"

"Another new bodyguard, new associates, new wife, new family," Clara replied bitterly. Jimmy turned and nodded at her.

"Anyway, you don't need us. You don't need Eli. You're Nucky Thompson. All you gotta worry about is when you run out of money and you run out of booze and you run out of company and the only person left to judge you is you.”

"I don't have to take this."

"No, god forbid someone else set the terms of engagement," Clara snapped.

"Doll-," Eli began as he walked out behind Nucky. Clara's face made him reconsider. "Clara, I had to. He was going to do it regardless, I thought I was a better-"

"What did he offer you?" Clara asked, not wanting to hear her uncle's justifications.

"To take care of June and the kids while I'm...gone."

Clara nodded, understanding but unable to forgive. I begged them all to stop well before we got here, she thought, and to a man they all ignored me.

"Wait," Jimmy said suddenly. "I hired Kaity. She needs to come tonight."

"Who?" Nucky asked.

"Father's maid?" Clara questioned at the same time, equally puzzled.

"That all right? She said you got along well," Jimmy said to Clara.

Clara was still entirely perplexed but nodded. "I quite like Kaity." Something was going on, Clara realized, and it was for Kaity's benefit they got her away from Father's house as quickly as possible. "If you want us out of Atlantic City tonight, I'm going to need assistance. I certainly can't be expected to do all this without a maid," Clara said in her most princessy voice to Nucky.

"I'll send her. You leave tonight." Whatever domestic disturbance it caused Margaret was more than worth it to bring this debacle to an end.

A smart person would say nothing, Clara thought and resolved to let her father leave. Her resolve faltered."Enjoy your victory, pyrrhic though it may be."

"I'm glad the money I spent on your education wasn't entirely wasted," Nucky said and for a moment wanted to say more. To ask them how. Why. To pull the snub-nosed revolver hidden behind his back out and put a bullet straight through Jimmy's and Harrow's faces. To tell them not to go, that they could work things out between them.

Instead, he put his hat on and motioned for Eli to follow him.

Clara swallowed back a sob and fought back the urge to run after her father, to rage at him more, to turn and throw herself into her husband's arms. Turning, she saw the same look on Jimmy's face and reached over to squeeze his arm.

They were all changed into traveling clothes and packed with remarkable speed. By the time Owen pulled up in the Buick with a silent Kaity they were mostly ready to go, Clara coming down the stairs to speak to Kaity as she saw Richard carefully loading what was left of Angela's paintings, wrapped in blankets to protect them from the rain, into the back of his car.

"I fear I'm not sure what transpired while I was...away," Clara told Kaity, "but I think I must owe you a debt of gratitude. And I'm thrilled that you want to work for us, but it won't be in Atlantic City."

"I've always wanted to go to New York," Kaity answered.

"And Owen?" Clara asked softly so the men couldn't hear.

Kaity shook her head, and for one moment Clara thought Kaity was going to cry. She patted Kaity's arm.

"We need you to stay behind and finish packing the house," Jimmy said, pulling some cash from a roll in his pocket. "We'll be in touch in a couple of days about getting the boxes and you on a train to Penn Station."

And then there was nothing left to do but leave. Richard was carrying a pajama-clad Tommy down the stairs and Clara looked hard at Jimmy. It felt like Christmas had just happened, when Gillian left and Jimmy said he and Angela had a surprise and they'd driven down to the beach house. She'd been jealous, Clara remembered, feeling bereft of Richard's company once he was no longer guarding her and feeling uncertain of how to move forward. Jealous of a real home. Angela had been so excited about the windows and the light, and all the art she'd make in the sunroom.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Tommy rides with you and Richard, okay?" Jimmy said instead of answering.

"We all meet up tomorrow at four at AR's," Charlie cut in, more than ready to get the hell out of Atlantic City. "I'll ride with Darmody here."

They put a pillow and blanket in the backseat for the sleeping Tommy and sat in the car for a minute, watching the rain beat against the beach house.

Entangling Clara with Arnold Rothstein was not how he planned on leaving Atlantic City with her. With a start he realized that this meant Charlie Luciano would be around them more often and he just managed to bite back a groan. "I know. This isn't..."

Clara turned to look at her husband and shook her head. "I told you I wanted an adventure, and New York will certainly be that. A year ago I was trying to figure out what I felt about you while I felt doomed to marry Darcy, to have a life I didn't want. Starting a life with you in Manhattan, it's so much better than the life I thought I'd have. I just worry..."

He slipped his hand into her hair and turned her face towards him. "This is all. More than I ever thought I'd get. And I always liked. Adventure stories."

She leaned her face against his, careful not to dislodge the mask. We are breathing the same air, she thought, and that's victory enough.

If there was one thing their courtship had taught them it was how to kiss in the front seat of a Model-T and they put their shared knowledge back into use.

"Jesus Christ they are out here fogging up the windows with your kid in the fucking back!" Charlie said from outside their car.

They pulled apart and smiled at each other. As he put the car into gear Clara curled up against his side and refused to look back as they left her father's seaside kingdom behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the very bottom of my heart, I can't tell you how much I've appreciated every reader, every kudos, every comment. Clara, Richard, and the rest of the T3 crew kept me sane during 2020, and this is the very first "book" (that sounds incredibly pretentious) I've ever finished. And all the encouragement I received helped me finished my story.
> 
> Book Two is already underway, and the first chapter will go up in the next couple of weeks. If you are subscribed to T3 please subscribe to me, or follow me on Tumblr, to be notified when the first chapter of Hand in Hand to Hell is published.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> Bud Matheson has a connection to the BWE Canon https://portiaadams.tumblr.com/post/641851994995294208/who-the-hell-is-bud-matheson
> 
> Clara's dress: https://www.1stdibs.com/fashion/clothing/day-dresses/1920s-blue-white-lined-pinafore-dress/id-v_3251413/
> 
> Rothstein really did own 144 West 57th Street, and more importantly, he really did collect the children of his enemies and friends in real life by giving them jobs and apartments. Rothstein's collection plays a major part in the next book.
> 
> As do Charlie and Meyer. With Richard, Clara, Jimmy, and Tommy in New York the focus of the story shifts, although Nucky/Gillian/Eli/Margaret and the rest still have a significant impact on the story.
> 
> I want to hear any (or every thought) you've ever had about the story. 
> 
> And again, thank you so much for reading!


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